So... DisplayHDR 400?

JagDoomEX on real hardware: Built the latest release ( dosemu2 on Ubuntu on WSL 2 on Windows 11 ◔_◔ ) and it's neat! Pro Controller support is nice, but performance with music isn't great yet. JagDoomEvolved, however, feels... Incremental? Unnecessary? More like a personal mod than an upgrade? Like, at least Rafael Silva's Dracula X Saturn patch actually fixes some stuff in Meduza Team's work; JagDoomEvolved isn't clear on any actual fixes and just seems to change option conventions based on personal preferences. I'm curious to hear a demonstration of the "audio filtering" differences, as well as empirical evidence of performance increases from the static HUD; the 'changelog' is so poorly-written that it's tricky to discern what's actually new and what's carried-over from EX... I also tried it on real hardware, and nothing really stood-out to me. That all did get me using my Skunkboard again; turned-out I hadn't updated the BIOS in forever. Also helped me diagnose the video issue with my 3DO - it was the input on the TV; even routing audio through the controller and using a different TV, however, still resulted in the system just kinda suddenly dying after a while.

Was on Holiday recently, and ended-up playing some games on NSO:

• Banjo Kazooie - Never been my kind of collect-a-thon, but did finally get into it and I understand it now - I was too old for a babysitter in 1998. Impressive scope, but a janky camera and frustrating controls waste so much time. Tooie immediately feels better, but I wanna wrap-up the first one first.
• Shining Force  - Never did finish it back in the '90s; gets kinda cheap toward the end and grinding is pretty awful, but there's a lot of character and plenty of ways to play. Like Banjo, looking forward to the sequel.
• Super Mario 64 - 103 stars; skipped 14 of the 100-coin stars, and all three of the red-coin stars on the Bowser levels.

MOTU micro express (original parallel) for $6 - never needed more than one MIDI input, but for that price? Why not.

So Switch 2 got that price increase a while back, and it's still cheaper than everything but the 512GB Series S. It got new Donkey Kong, Hyrule Warriors, Kirby Air Riders, Mario Kart, Mario Tennis, Pokopia, Splatoon, Star Fox, and Yoshi; plus enhanced ports of a bunch of great Switch games, portable ports of a bunch of great PS4 games, and backwards-compatibility that improves upon a staggeringly vast Switch library; plus exclusive NSO features like GameCube emulation. There's a bump in resolution and refresh rates over the previous generation, plus VRR and HDR - it's just too bad that the current VRR implementation in portable mode is reportedly pretty inconsistent between various titles, VRR in docked mode is currently Japan-only (and only works with Switch 2 Welcome Tour), and HDR in portable mode isn't really true HDR (420 nits). So I'm still waiting to see if they do any kind of display upgrade before taking the plunge myself.

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 DDR4/2x256GB SSDs)
• $40 4GB Radeon RX 560 (2nd-best AMD card compatible w/the 240W Dell?)
• $7 Wooting 60HE
• $2 Logitech G203
• $2 Bluetooth adapter
• Windows 11 (M.2) + EndeavourOS (SATA)

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!