Easy, but not too easy.

Switch demos:

• Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon is not what I expected, and I like it.
• Contra: Operation Galuga was kinda boring.
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown feels better than I expected.
• Princess Peach™: Showtime! is pretty sweet.
• Swordship is really polished, but just didn't really do it for me.

3DS:

• Ever Oasis is great; a true hidden gem. Challenging in more ways than one, but never too difficult or overwhelming; Grezzo did a great job making sure there're all kinds of options to streamline the game's various systems.

GBA:

• Scurge was really fun, right up until the final boss; felt like such a chore that I figured I was missing something. Checked-out some walkthroughs and playthroughs and yup, it's just a chore.
• Lady Sia really is better than what I'd thought of it in the past. It's rough around the edges, but it plays well and looks great on a proper display.

GB:

• Fall of the Foot Clan was just as good as I'd rembered. Simple and fun.
• Kirby's Dream Land 2 was kind of a slog, and unlocking the secret ending felt like another chore.
• Gargoyle's Quest is brutal, but also really charming.

Also, my Pocket Adapter Set arrived, and they're almost perfect. Neo Turf Masters (NGPC) doesn't work, and PCE/TG-16 six-button support is a problem with the adapter blocking the shoulder buttons.

Thanks to those adapters, I finally played through my copies of Splatterhouse - which is still really solid - and Keith Courage, which... This was the pack-in, remember. Yikes.

Anyway, lucked-into free copies of Need for Speed Underground 2 (sweet!) and Most Wanted Black Edition (already had it) and they've aged pretty well.

Yeah, I'm spending too much money.

Yesterday's finds:

• Batman Returns (GG)
• Good game.
• Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter (PS2)
• Weird game.
• Children of Mana (DS)
• Shop was trying to sell a loose copy with a "printed cover" for $65; this game has never sold for more than $40, even new. Also, their "printed cover"s are just generic store templates with the game's title in all-caps. I worked-out a three-for-two deal that got it down to a more reasonable price.
• Coca Cola Kid (GG)
• Gray cart. Saw it in a weird small-town pawnshop for $30 CDN. Yup.
• Croc (PS1)
• Black label, but just the cover of the manual :/
• Orcs and Elves (DS)
• Always wanted to try it.
• Robocop vs The Terminator (GG)
• Good game.
• Thor: God of Thunder (DS)
• WayForward!
• Vampire: Master of Darkness (GG)
• Found a guy a few towns over selling his kids' collection; got it for under $100.

The Most Dangerous Game

Ventured-out to some other cities, following-up on some old game shops I hadn't been to in over a decade. Came back with:

• Battle Ace (SuperGrafx)
• Don't own a SuperGrafx, but the Pocket can play it so I treated myself. Also realised that I own Darius Plus, which is enhanced for the SuperGrafx to reduce sprite flicker!
• Blinx: The Time Sweeper (XBOX)
• $10 complete. No-brainer.
• Croc 2 (PS)
• Better than the PC version. Saw the GBC version, which is more akin to a top-down action RPG; should've picked it up.
• Duck Tales (GB)
• Shouldn't've sold it when I was a kid.
• Escape from Monster Manor (3DO)
• Silly game, but really fun. Overpaid a little, but I don't care.
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order (Switch)
• Just wanted it.
• Mortal Kombat Unchained (PSP)
• Never played it or Deception; unique characters.
• Nightmare Creatures II (DC)
• I think I might've thought there was a PC version.
• Shatterhand (NES)
• Been looking for it, but hadn't seen it in the wild in years; paid a decent price, and totally worth it. Badass.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue (GB)
• This one got expensive! Found a beat-up copy for relatively cheap though; decent Metroidvania.

Breezed though Final Fantasy Legend III, and what a downgrade from the first two. I especially remember being so excited about the screenshot with the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk on the back of the box, but when I finally got to that point of the game it was just kinda... Meh; just like everything else. The mechanics are solid, but none of it was anywhere near as memorable as the first two.

Almost done Adventures of Mana, spent some time with Final Fantasy Adventure, and thinking maybe I should've gone with Sword of Mana instead.

Also, finally sat down with DOOM 32X: Resurrection, and with a quality CRT shader... Oh my. Makes me wonder just what a 32X CD was truly capable of.

Jewellery?

Ordered a Master System Player for Game Gear from RetroSix in England, works like a charm on the Analogue Pocket, feels really well-constructed, and WAS OPENED AT THE BORDER DESPITE PROPER CUSTOMS LABELS, RE-ASSESSED AS ~$150 WORTH OF JEWELLERY, AND TAXED ACCORDINGLY. Argh. I can fight it, but I'll only get 60% of the fees back (at best) if I win... Seriously though, jewellery!?

Anyway, bought a Game Gear lot that included:

• Aladdin
• Ariel the Little Mermaid
• Deep Duck Trouble
• Jurassic Park
• The Lion King
• Sonic the Hedgehog 2
• World Series Baseball

...Really just wanted Deep Duck Trouble, already had Sonic 2, and the rest are all pretty good except for The Little Mermaid.

WTF, Nintendo!?

So immediately after my last post, I purchased and downloaded Adventures of Mana on my Vita... I had to add the funds elsewhere, but the whole process made me wonder why I can't still purchase 3D Streets of Rage 2, the BotW DLC for Sonic: Lost World, or even download the Data Packs for Xenoblade Chronicles X 😠

Anyway, I went to a thrift store afterward and found an AC1900 MU-MIMO TP-Link Archer A8 for $6! Not much of an upgrade over the AC1750 MU-MIMO D-Link DIR-867 I got from the same shop for $3.50 in June, but I'll take it!

Big fan of Donna Beneviento's house.

So about the Pocket...

Cartridges I never finished:

• Final Fantasy Adventure (GB)
• Never took the time; may just go with the GBA or Vita remakes instead for now.
• Final Fantasy Legend III (GB)
• I'm ~1/3rd through it now. I remember buying this new and returning it because it felt like such a weird departure from the first two. It's not bad, but I just don't think the time-traveling spaceship works very well within the limitations of the Game Boy - or at least not how they tried to pull it off here. Also the music is worse, the enemy designs are worse, and the story just feels kinda phoned-in. Got me looking at SaGa Frontier 2 and SaGa: Scarlet Grace - Ambitions though.
• Gargoyle's Quest (GB)
• Never got very far with it back in the day, but the Pocket absolutely breathes new life into this one.
• Jet Grind Radio (GBA)
• Bought it, never spent any quality time with it... Isometric games on a cross d-pad aren't ideal.
• Kirby & the Amazing Mirror (GBA)
• False-started this one so many times; tweaks my exploration neuroses in a way that I'm not sure I like.
• Kirby's Dream Land 2 (GB)
• I just like the first one better.
• Klonoa Empire of Dreams, Klonoa 2 Dream Champ Tournament (GBA)
• Bought them forever ago, always meant to get around to them.
• Tails' Adventure (GG)
• I picked this one up well after the platform was abandoned, and it was so slow to get going on the dismal Game Gear LCD that I never got into it. Playing it on the Pocket is infinitely better in terms of both the screen and the save states; passwords can rot and die for all I care. Basic Metroidvania, solid execution, lovely graphics, and only occasionally obtuse.

Homebrew/Romhacks:

• Coria (GBC)
• Neat.
• Super Mario Land DX 1&2 (GBC)
• A childhood dream-come-true, especially the sequel!
• Sylvan Tale (GG)
• Always wanted to play this, wasn't interested in an emulator, and wasn't ready to pay anyone $75 for a fan-translated repro cart. Another example of how good the Game Gear actually was; not quite on-par with Link's Awakening, but a really good portable action-RPG nonetheless. I'm grateful that I got to play this one the way it was meant to be played.
• Zelda's Adventure (GB)
• Just awful, and I dig it.

...And then there's the really expensive stuff. Even if I were to try them on the openFPGA cores, a lot of these're just overrated:

• Avenging Spirit (GB)
  
• Great concept and presentation, but is this the best version? Might go for the Switch remake.
• The Aleste GG trilogy (GG)
• I'll own these some day; 3 is especially impressive, and works on original hardware!
• Bomberman Quest (GBC)
• A Bomberman action-RPG is a great idea, but lackluster execution here.
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (GBA)
• A classic for sure, but kinda short and the story is pretty cringey even by Castlevania standards. Prime Castlevania to me is still Belmont's Revenge, Super IV, Rondo of Blood, and Bloodlines.
• Castlevania: Legends (GB)
• No thanks.
• Defenders of Oasis (GG)
• Still trying to track this one down for under $100 CDN - another solid genre showing on an underappreciated handheld made significantly better by the Analogue Pocket.
• Trip World (GB)
• Looking at DX on Switch instead.
• Vampire: Master of Darkness
• Neat Castlevania clone; I'd also like to find this for under $100.
• Wendy: Every Witch Way (GBC/GBA)
• Really great curiosity, but I'm just not spending $200 on it.
• X (GB)
• Might actually import this just to have it.

The Pocket also got me hunting again; and while most of the options in my area have been picked dry for a decade now, I did uncover a few interesting things outside of eBay and online buy-and-sells:

• Advance Guardian Heroes (GBA)
• Not a great game, but might as well.
• Ever Oasis (3DS)
• This one did not show-up on my radar when it was new. Seen lots of comparisons to Zelda, Animal Crossing, etc... But I'm getting some overall ActRaiser vibes from it, myself.
• Land of Illusion (GG)
• Never really liked the series, but there's something about this entry.
• Lilo & Stitch, Lilo & Stitch 2: Hämsterviel Havoc (GBA)
• Cheap and reminiscent of Metal Slug.
• Psychic Force 2012 (DC)
• Don't recall why I didn't pick this one up earlier.
• Quartet (SMS)
• Classic.
• Scurge: Hive (GBA)
• Honestly saw this everywhere for decades and had no idea that it was a delightfully hand-drawn isometric Metroid clone - the cover art does not convey that.
• Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon (GBA)
• Found it for a fair price at a suburban mall kiosk.
• TMNT: Fall of the Foot Clan (GB)
• Had this as a kid and sold it. Holds-up to this day, especially on the Pocket.

Put Alan Wake II on hold before getting too deep into it so I could do everything I just listed above, and also because my partner wanted to start Resident Evil: Village. Re: RE: Village, it's another lovely but flawed entry in the series; almost done.

Finally, finished Mad Max and had a great time with it. I'd say it's an underrated game, but a lot of people seem to be saying that so I'm not sure that it's true anymore.

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!

Good Deal

Radeon RX 6650 XT is $330 right now... That means I could build:

• Ryzen 5 5600
• B550 motherboard
  
• 16GB DDR4 3600MHz
• Radeon RX 6650 XT
• 500GB NVMe SSD
  
• 500W PSU
  

...For just under $900; tempting as a Linux box.

Otherwise, finished Samus Returns; do recommend.

$3000 (CDN, after tax)

New build for a friend:

• Ryzen 7 7700X
• Noctua NH-D9L
• ASUS TUF GAMING X670E-PLUS WIFI
• Corsair Vengeance RGB 2x16GB DDR5 5600MT/s C36 
  
• ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 3080 V2 OC
  
• 1TB WD_BLACK SN850X
• ASUS ROG STRIX 850G
  
• Fractal Design Pop Air RGB (Black)

...More RGB than I usually work with (three case fans, RAM, GPU, motherboard, power button) but I got to slap a big ol' brown-on-brown Noctua fan in the middle of it, so I'm good :) Very quiet, too. Didn't go all-out, but it leaves them a nice upgrade path. 12GB 3080s and 3080 Ti cards are either impossible to find around here or horribly overpriced. Considered a 4080, but ended-up saving $600 by going with the 10GB 3080 OC which is already overkill for their use cases. They'll also be putting a few spinning drives in there, and an optical drive - yes, that case has a 5.25" bay!

Anyway, fun stuff:

• Forgot that the 7700X has an integrated GPU; took me a second to figure-out what that thing was in the Device Manager.
• So much RGB software; iCue + Aura plugin for iCue + Armory Crate
• Getting the thing to POST at all with that RAM; BIOS FlashBack to latest revision, boot with single module to complete the update, set EXPO, add second module. While I was figuring that out, I found reports people saying DDR5 memory training can take up to 30 minutes!? Thankfully wasn't that.
  

Early

Early Black Friday deals:

• DEATHLOOP - $26 CDN
  
• DualSense - $65 CDN
• Using it on PC w/DS4Windows for unsupported games
  
• FMR Audio RNC1773 - $160 CDN
• Grey, AC, used; MSRP is $270
• Not actually Black Friday, but a great deal!
• Pixel Buds A-Series - FREE
• $40-off + $100 Google Store credit
• Rez Infinite - $10 CDN
  
• WarioWare: Get It Together! - $51 CDN
• Isn't included in the image for the latest Switch deals list, but is listed in the fine print; could've saved $6 :/

Been playing:

• Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (honestly getting kinda boring, but I'm still into it)
  
• Injustice 2 (pretty, but really just trying to get through it at this point)
  
• Kirby: Planet Robobot  (pretty good)
  
• Metroid: Samus Returns (very good)
  
• Yoshi's Crafted World (great entry in the console series; plenty to do)

Kind of cheesed that the $80 PC version of Persona 5 Royal was announced within six months of me picking-up the PS4 version at full price... Also that Ys IX is still generally $60~80 after three years. Kinda want to just get both on Switch, but also not ready to sacrifice that much performance and visual quality :\

...And Sweet.

Played through A Short Hike, and it's perfect. Wrapped-up Prodeus and the post-early-access levels disappointed. Finished Knights and Bikes and it was fine... I just wish I enjoyed it more.

Kirby and The Forgotten Land's post-game stuff is nice (finished in Wild Mode without any support items), but the secret ending boss feels like we're getting into Soulsborne territory... In a Kirby game. Stop with the genre homogenisation, please. Moved-on to Age of Calamity; not a big fan of musou games, but I'm trying for this one.

Nice Hat

Took me over ten years, but I finally played through Fez and it was fantastic. I followed its development closely, I couldn't wait to play it, and when it was eventually released on XBLA I got through the first few screens before just kinda letting it sit. I remember feeling overwhelmed by it back then (I had also stalled on Deus Ex: Human Revolution) so maybe it was just bad timing for me, but I'm glad I got back into it. Breezed-through in three hours to finish the game with 27 cubes and 7 anti-cubes, then started a New Game +... I never start a new game +.

Noticed the clamshell case for my copy of ARMS was different than the rest of my Switch games; looks like I got a UAE copy. Nice thing is that it's still a USA card, so I tracked-down a Canadian case and insert on eBay. Also grabbed Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity and Yoshi's Crafted World on the most recent Switch sale.

Beyond that, my Pixel 7 is really nice. The lemongrass phone goes really well with the dark green Ringke Onyx I got for $15 CDN on Amazon; the official lemongrass case was sold-out for pre-order and during the first week I had the phone. Now to decide what to do with the $100 Google Store credit... Buds? Probably Buds.

Pretty Terrifying

Finally got a chance to play P.T. on an old PS4, and really enjoyed it. Solved a few loops by accident, missed a few moments because I was looking in the wrong direction, couldn't trigger the second giggle (didn't have a mic connected, so...?), and looked-up the ending on YouTube. Death Stranding is cool, but what I didn't realise is how influential this teaser has been on the genre in years since.

My Pixel 3 has started to chip around the USB port, the power button has started to malfunction and call 911 (I've since disabled that "feature"), Google isn't providing any more system updates, etc... Two friends' Pixel 6 phones had heat issues - nothing show-stopping, but enough that I didn't pull the trigger on a $100-off sale; I hear Android 13 helps a lot with that though. Then the 7 was announced, plus a $100 Google Store credit, and I accidentally knocked my caseless Pixel 3 off a counter and the back glass shattered; it's alright now, back in its case, but there should be a 7 in the mail for me soon.

Found a copy of Kirby: Planet Robobot - really does seem to be going for nearly $80 CDN everywhere these days.

Prodeus is out, the vkquake-rt mod looks really good (would love to see it support Arcane Dimensions), still chipping-away at Cyberpunk, and it feels like I'm forgetting something again...

Marching Cubes

Found Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia for DS for $20 each. Really good games trying new things while staying true to the franchise - but not sure how I feel about the shift in tone of the first one, the length of the second one, or the structure of the third one. Almost got the good endings in all of them, but the bosses just started to feel a little Soulsborne-y toward the end of each and I'm kinda ready to give up and move over to Samus Returns.

Did give-up on trying to find Dark Chambers (7800) and Line of Fire (SMS) in the wild, and just grabbed them off eBay. The former is pretty cool and the latter completes my SegaScope 3-D library.

Got good deals on Arms and Shin Megami Tensei V for Switch. Also ordered a refurbished first-party Joy-Con Grip directly from Nintendo because they don't seem to exist otherwise.

Replaced the hard drive in my Core 2 Quad; nothing much to back-up on there. Still really happy with that computer and EndeavourOS.

Oh, and Voxel DOOM is fantastic.

Lemmesee...

Not done Sonic Forces yet, but it's fine... I guess.

Injustice 2 is way better than Injustice.

Got a white OLED Switch as a gift; pretty sweet. Kirby and the Forgotten Land is lovely.

Got free passes to a local video game convention; saw a bunch of games I already own going for thousands of dollars more than I paid for them, but nothing I actually wanted... Or at least I wasn't gonna pay $600 for a better copy of Earthworm Jim Special Edition.

The SIO2SD thing for the 800XL is really cool. Played Elektra Glide, Pastfinder, The Pharaoh's Curse, Rescue on Fractalus, and Zybex - all totally rad; absolutely gives the C64 a run for its money.

My Core 2 Quad EndeavourOS PC died during an OS update... Looks like it was the hard drive physically failing.

Had to oil the fans on two of the i7 3820s I gave away, and replace one CPU - luckily had a matching spare.

Not Quite Hot Takes

So Sonic Forces is ridiculous, Colors Ultimate is still kinda broken, Origins is apparently disappointing, and Frontiers looks weird... I really thought Colors, Generations, Lost World and Mania were great overall steps in the right direction; sad to see the franchise go off the rails yet again.

Resident Evil 7 maybe should've wrapped-up after chapter 4... But then I guess it wouldn't honour the series' tradition of jumping the shark after nailing a strong and unique opening. Also, the RTX update looks awful and it seems to break (or at least reduce the quality of) HDR. Meh. I'll play 8 whenever it's $20.

Finished Echo and it didn't trigger the endgame achievement, so that sucks and I'm not doing it again; still a gorgeous audiovisual experience though, intriguing narrative, and intense gameplay... Just a little a rough around the edges. Seriously underappreciated.

Diablo Immortal is fine. Don't spend money on it, and do play it on mobile.

Also, finally tried Antstream - free tier is decent, challenges are interesting, video quality is kinda bad, selection is alright but nothing spectacular.

Unnecessary

Found one of these for $35 CAD at a thrift store - missing the lumbar pillow and there's some wear, but MSRP is ~$585 CAD and the cheapest one in my area is an open-box discount for $405... I'll make do :)

Also found an Atari 800 XL for $170 CAD on eBay. Was sold as-is, looked kinda grimy, and it powered-on - but was otherwise untested... Judging by the photos, was an NTSC model and came with a good PSU variant. Figured it was worth the risk given current prices; great-looking paperweight at worst. Turns-out it looks way better in person and works flawlessly - seller also threw-in a peripheral cable! Something was rattling around inside - turned-out to be a loose screw, washer, and grounding wire; easy fix. So now I'm looking for cartridges and probably one of these.

Still chipping away...

Sonic Lost World falls apart about halfway through; still looks great, genuinely catchy music, writing holds-up... But the world/level/boss design and mechanics just get messier as you progress. Still don't hate it though.

Injustice is kinda boring.

SNK Heroines Tag Team Frenzy is not as awful as I expected it to be.

Diablo Immortal feels crowded - in terms of world, quests, players, field of view... It's a decent time-sink, but it's nothing special.

Death Stranding is waaay more engaging than I expected. Kinda glad I took so long to get to it, too - looks incredible at 240Hz in HDR.

Another One

Found another DX-NRUTER in a bag of old stuff at my parents' house. Dunno if I should leave it stock or put DD-WRT on it... I've read that Wi-Fi encryption and MAC filtering don't work on it when it's a repeater because of the Broadcom drivers. Bleh.

Got both EA3500 routers working as secure repeaters by following this guide.

Don't understand the hate for Sonic Lost World; did it just release too closely to Super Mario Galaxy? I think it's one of the best-looking and best-written Sonic games; the Genesis games are still the pinnacle for me, Adventure/Heroes haven't aged well, 2006 is broken in so many ways, Secret Rings/Black Knight were surprisingly good, Unleashed is fine albeit ridiculous, Colors is totally solid, Generations was a revelation, and Lost World is genuinely innovative. Oh, and Team Sonic Racing is kind of a slog.

Revisiting Injustice 1 & 2 after MK11; decent.

Trivial

DD-WRT totally unlocks 1300Mbps Wi-Fi on the EA6300V1. Neat.

DIR-859 doesn't compare to the Archer A7 in the larger/obstructed space.

Dusted-off the DX-NRUTER - had forgotten that I broke the Wi-Fi radio when I last flashed it with DD-WRT. Looks like it only works with dd-wrt.v24-13577_NEWD-2_std-nokaid.bin from 2010. Tried a number of DD-WRT releases with no luck - none of the dd-wrt.v24_ releases support the radio, and all of the dd-wrt.v24-48884_NEWD-2_K2.6_ releases bricked it - thank goodness for TFTP. Decided to give it a shot as a repeater, and it worked fine until I enabled any Wi-Fi security on the repeater... I think I'm just over it now.

I had way more fun with Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate than I expected to after XL. The story mode still doesn't compare to 2011's and Kronika is uninspiring, but the new Krypt is a major upgrade over XL's and the character customisation is unreasonably deep. Had way more fun grinding towers to unlock more of the Krypt so I could further customise my characters... Until the grind got ridiculous; I need something like 7500 souls to progress now, and that just turned me right off the whole endeavour. Finding Reptile was a really nice nod to the 1995 movie though :) Reinstalled XL afterward, avoiding the story mode, and really appreciated the towers and the Krypt a lot more this time.

Got a little scared for a minute there...

DD-WRT on the EA6300V1 because OpenWrt suggests that they're effectively a non-option and I can't find any info on how Tomato compares to the closed-source aspects of DD-WRT. It's been years since I've really messed around with any of them, and I'm not quite up-to-speed on all of this - so I went with what seemed like the safest bet. Ended-up following this guide, but with the latest DD-WRT as the final step - pretty convoluted, but it worked! I couldn't get 5GHz speeds over 400Mbps at first, but it just turned-out that DD-WRT's "Auto" channel setting is maybe not good. Did a site survey, moved things over to a less-crowded part of the spectrum, and now everything looks happy. Next test is with the Archer T9E to see if an EA6300V1 really can reach AC1600 speeds.

Checked-out another thrift store today, found a Sony BDP-S1700, a DIR-868L, another DIR-822, and an Acer tower with a Core 2 Quad, 3GB of RAM, and a GTX 650... The tower was the most expensive item at $15 CDN. Neat projects, but I left them for someone else.

Because I'm bored...

Archer A7

• AC1750
• 3 x 5 dBi
• 28 dBm
• USB 2.0
• Single-Core

DIR-859

• AC1750
• 3 x 2 dBi
• 20 dBm
• No USB
• Single-Core

 EA6400

• AC1600
• 2 x 4 dBi + 3 x 5 dBi (internal)
• 24 dBm
• USB 3.0
• Dual-Core

Unless I'm misunderstanding how my devices are reporting link speeds, I don't think I have anything that really takes advantage of the 300~450Mbps or 1300Mbps Wi-Fi speeds.

Found-out that while USB 3.0 seems to make a significant difference in NAS performance, the only stock options are SMB 1.0 or FTP - neither of which is particularly secure.

I have no idea if the dual-core BCM4708 in the EA6400 performs any better than the single-core QCA9563 in the other two.

I'm not super-familiar with antennas, but it looks like the DIR-859 would be best for an open area with no obstructions, the EA6400 is more directional but also has more antennas and beamforming, and the Archer A7 is a bit of a brute-force approach.

So of the two places I'm deploying to, I think it makes sense to have the Archer A7 in the larger home with the most obstructions, and then the EA6400 in the smaller open area where more devices will be accessing it at once.

Finally, install DD-WRT on the EA6300V1 (no OpenWrt because Broadcom, apparently) to effectively make it another EA6400, and there's my backup. Test the DIR-859 in the larger/obstructed space for science before giving it away, and... Yeah, that's the ticket!

Flannel Zebra Jammies

Two more:

D-Link DIR-859: AC1750, Gigabit Ethernet, no USB ($7)

Linksys EA6400: AC1600, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0 ($7)

...Replaced my EA6300 with the EA6400 because why not, and gonna keep the DIR-859 as a backup. Giving away the EA6300, DIR-822, two EA3500s, and a Dynex DX-NRUTER.

Oh! Turns-out the EA6300 I've had for almost a decade is an EA6300V1, which is an EA6400 with EA6300 firmware. Huh.

Pretty-much wrapped-up Forza Horizon 4 and Mortal Kombat 11 - completing a few odds-and-ends in each (LEGO® Speed Champions and the new Krypt are really fun) but the big takeaway is that I am now officially spoiled by pseudo-HDR and VRR up to 240Hz.

Also tried Sonic Lost World again - on Windows this time, and it's kinda pretty good.

Mildly Disappointed

One dead pixel and one dead green subpixel on the AW2721D; Dell won't authorise an exchange for less than six, but at least they're not really noticeable... Let's see if any more crop-up over the next three years. The bleed from the local dimming zones is, however, quite noticeable unless you tweak application brightness along with the display's "Dark Stabilizer" and "Variable Backlight" settings. Despite all of that though, it's a very impressive monitor for the price. I've put a Dell U2311H next to it, and it's night-and-day.

The AC1750 Archer A7 and the AC1900 Archer T9E occasionally reach transfer speeds in excess of 1Gbps, but much more consistently achieve speeds only nominally better than AC1200 despite being less than ten feet away from each other in the same room. Oh well.

Finally, can confirm that the BDP-S560 only does photos over DLNA. It's not like I was really gonna use it for anything other than playing old Blu-ray discs - nor did I expect it to be able to decode any modern video formats - but it would've been a cool feature!

Features

Went back to the thrift store for fun, and this time I snagged a TP-Link Archer A7 AC1750 router for $7! Found-out when I got home that it had OpenWrt installed and an admin password had been set :\ Took me a minute to figure-out that I had to press the the "WPS/Wi-Fi On/Off" button to get it to boot into failsafe mode, but then it was simple enough to SSH in and soft-reset it. Next I was hoping to get it back to stock (I may have bricked it once or twice in the process) and TP-Link's vaguely-documented TFTP recovery solution is a nice feature - though that took a few tries before I figured-out that the Ethernet controller on my Lenovo just didn't seem to be compatible, and then that the Ethernet on my desktop was too slow to transfer a 16MB firmware file within the set window before the router would just continue to boot normally. Luckily, my partner's HP laptop worked great! Unfortunately, none of the TP-Link firmware files took, so it's currently on the latest OpenWrt release.

Now I'm comparing the three 802.11ac routers I have, trying to decide which should go where...

TP-Link Archer A7: AC1750, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0

Linksys EA6300: AC1200, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0

D-Link DIR-822: AC1200, 10/100 Ethernet, no USB

...But since I'm almost never transferring anything over my local networks, I'm not serving any kind of NAS, and my Internet connection will always be the bottleneck, I don't really see any real advantage to any of them anywhere. Maybe the Archer A7 goes wherever the Archer T9E goes? Whichever has the best DLNA implementation goes wherever the Blu-ray player goes?

Timely

AW2721D went on-sale for 37%-off in Canada today and Dell's offering an additional 10% off monitors, so $792 instead of $1400. Nice.

Native Linux gaming with modern distros on old hardware is... Fine.

Gave-up on Shadow of Mordor since it was never gonna run great on this GPU and my setup isn't officially supported anyway. The latest update to Inscryption looks for Inscryption.x86 but the included file is Inscryption.x86_64 - copying and renaming works. Borderlands 2 was next (never quite finished all of the DLC) and it worked flawlessly.

Unrelated, but recently helped a pal with their rural Internet access - fiber is coming and they're just out of range for LTE, so he's stuck on 10Mbps down/1Mbps up/700ms satellite in the meantime... Oof. They are on a waitlist for Starlink as well, which I learned has less latency because low-orbit satellites. Huh.

Underserved market or calculated gap?

What I want: A sub-$1000, 27~32", QHD+, DisplayHDR 600, adaptive-sync, 120Hz+ monitor.

What I can find: A sub-$1000 (in the US), 27", QHD+, DisplayHDR 600, adaptive-sync, 120Hz+ monitor - that costs $1400 in Canada, with the stupidest design ever or a reasonably-priced one with a much more subtle design that only comes curved.

Everything else remotely comparable is $1000...

Boom

Bought the Best of Boomer Shooters Bundle. Hedon is clearly made with love and runs well on Linux, but it's kinda rough. Project Warlock is great. DUSK is really good. Amid Evil feels way more grounded and focused than the trailers suggested, but is ultimately getting kinda boring as I progress. Ion Fury is good. Haven't gotten to Dread Templar, HROT, or Hellbound. Haven't used the ULTRAKILL coupon, but did use the Prodeus one and it absolutely lived-up to the hype; stellar game, and I can't wait for more.

More New-Linux-on-Old-Hardware Gaming

• BIT.TRIP Runner 2 - Beta fixes common audio issue, but seems to require a GNOME theme; didn't care enough to troubleshoot beyond that. Uninstalled
  
• DUSK - Works great, really slick game; better than it looks in the trailers.
• Inscryption - Beta works really well.
  
• Penumbra - So far, so good.
  
• Quadrilateral Cowboy - Runs fine; haven't dug-in yet.
  
• Serious Sam 3: BFE - Either runs like shit or looks like shit despite exceeding recommended specs; barely playable either way, which is disappointing because it's a good game. Uninstalled.
  
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - Doesn't work. Various recommended fixes out there that seem to apply to a number of Feral Interactive Linux ports; most involve defining lib folders (either via launch options, symlinks, manual copies, compatibility releases, etc...) for specific package versions, but none worked reliably on EndeavourOS and most affected users seem to have turned to Proton. There's a 3GB beta update that I'm gonna try before giving up on it.
• XCOM: Enemy Unknown - ...And this time, Feral nailed it!
  

Thirfty

Thrift store finds:

• TP-Link Archer T9E AC1900 PCIe card ($7)
• D-Link DIR-822 AC1200 Router ($8)
  
• 10/100 Ethernet ports though? Really?
• Sony BDP-S560 Wi-Fi DLNA 1080p Blu-ray Player ($15)

Gonna upgrade a bunch of stuff at my parents' house :)

Seeing what it can do...

 So the final build is:

• Core 2 Quad Q9450
• EVGA 132-CK-NF79
• 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 RAM (dual channel)
• 1GB Radeon HD 5850
• 320GB 7200RPM SATA HDD
• EndeavourOS

...Removed jack2, added Remmina+RDP and Steam, and that's about it.

Steam works much better here than it did with the 8800 GTS, and I really wanted to see what it could do - so I installed some heavier games with native Linux support that would take advantage of the 5850. Started with Bound by Flame, but it wouldn't display anything; tried Painkiller: Hell & Damnation next, and it would crash after the splash screen; then I started troubleshooting and it turns-out both are apparently awful Linux ports that don't really work - so I played it safe and went with Portal, which ran great at 1080p w/max settings. Looking at what I haven't really played in my library, I'm thinking the Penumbra trilogy and Shadow of Mordor are the way to go. Next experiments might be to see what can be done with Proton on a GPU that doesn't support Vulkan, and how well Electron-based GeForce Now implementations work here; but the takeaway from all of this is that the C2D+3870 and C2Q+5850 make for solid Linux desktop computers with decent gaming options. Not sure I'd throw any real content creation tasks at them, but pretty happy with the results for spare parts and a free, modern OS.

For fun, I installed both the original Black Edition and the Hell & Damnation remake of Painkiller on Windows and... What the hell? The remake is awful! Why were reviewers so forgiving of that unnecessary trash, especially when the original holds-up so well!? Anyway...

Forza Horizon 4 Ultimate Edition and Mortal Kombat 11 Ultimate were both on really good sales, so I splurged. Forza's nice, but the Ultimate Edition bonuses immediately gave me enough "influence" to just skip three of the four introductory seasons... Kinda wish I'd gotten to play more of those. Otherwise, this was the fastest I've earned an F40 in any game, my upgraded orange-on-white '73 Carrera RS is probably the closest I'll ever get to driving a Singer, and call me cliché but I love my Sport Quattro S1. Haven't touched Fortune Island or the LEGO stuff yet. As good as this all is, however, I think I'm ready for a new Need for Speed game.

MK11 is boring; I think the series peaked in 2011.

Traded-in a bunch of old/random/scratched/free PS2, PS3, Wii, and Vita games for Metroid: Samus Returns, Xenoblade Chronicles X, and a Wii MotionPlus... Though to be fair, one of the trade-ins was a sealed copy of Demon's Souls for PS3 that I got for free years ago and never opened :)

Bogus

Rad isn't fun. It looks great, combat feels alright, it's all random enough to keep exploration interesting, and the mutation mechanic is neat... But the first two worlds just aren't engaging enough after a while to justify the grind and the game is surprisingly unoptimised on PC. It feels like the initial character-building would've been considerably more enjoyable if more was carried-over between runs, but instead I just got bored after a few days of repetition and the whole game felt like more and more of a slog with each death. I only paid ~$7 for it and it was fun for a few hours, but I honestly just gave-up and uninstalled it... And then re-installed it because it got under my skin and I still want to see more. Looking through old reviews and Double Fine's Discord, I see I'm not alone in my experience :\

Wasn't so bad...

...Finished Mooncrash.

Got to try a bunch of Switch games:

• Mario Golf: Super Rush - Solid golf game, twist is interesting, kinda lost interest after unlocking all the courses.
• Mario Tennis Aces - Just started it; waaay deeper than I expected - still trying to wrap my head around the controls.
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 - Neat, but the grind's kinda boring.
• New Pokémon Snap - Cute, relaxing; even if Pokémon isn't your thing, there's fun to be had here.
• Ultra Street Fighter II - The new-new graphics somehow look worse than SSF2T HD Remix, so I turned them off. Otherwise, really great package with a uniquely comprehensive version of the classic.
• Yoshi's Crafted World - Friggin' adorable and deceptively difficult. I love this series.

After patching Cyberpunk 2077 to 1.5, it was raining inside an elevator, a main NPC was ghosting and jumping around a cutscene, the dialogue choices still aren't indicative of the actual dialogue, and I swear Jackie's tuned ARCH sounds louder than it used to. Regardless, awesome world, great story, fantastic game.

The Ol' Switcheroo!

The more I think about it, the more the Core 2 Quad Linux system makes more sense with the Radeon HD 5850 and maybe a cheap SSD since the proprietary NVIDIA drivers don't seem to work so great with the old 8800 GTS and then fakeRAID support is the only limiting factor. For the Core 2 Duo, I still have a Radeon HD 3870 - and then the GTS can go into another Core 2 Duo E6750 system I have lying around that also needs a PSU.

Anyway, The Super NES Classic Edition is kinda perfect. First thing I did was unlock Star Fox 2, then played through Super Metroid (still holds-up), and now it's on to Mario RPG  - which objectvely looks best with the CRT filter. After that, I'm not sure... Likely Star Fox 2 and then either Final Fantasy III or EarthBound. Loved Yoshi's Island, but no rush to play it again.

Speaking of Nintendo, I finally finished Luigi's Mansion 3. Flawless art direction, oozing with character, technically impressive, genuinely intuitive treasure hunts, engaging and rewarding exploration, repetitive combat, and bafflingly boring/frustrating boss design; can't decide if the Gold Bones are an acknowledgement of that or not. Ultimately really liked it, but probably won't ever revisit it in earnest.

Also went back to Mooncrash; I think I may forego the all-five-in-one-run just because it feels arbitrary when so many of the crucial conditions are random; the further I got, the more exploration and experimentation felt discouraged - hazards, power outages, control modules, simulation corruption, etc... It all makes for an impressively-designed challenge, but also feels uncomfortably like a Souls-like speedrun.

Just for fun...

Finished Metroid Dread with 100% of the items. Last boss was tough - took me longer than I would've liked to get the patterns down, but was worth it to see the ending. Went back and played Zero Mission immediately after, and had a great time; kind of upset with myself for waiting all these years.

Tracked-down a brand new Super NES Classic on Kijiji for $120 CDN; stoked for that :)

Ended-up building this:

• Core 2 Duo E6750
• ASUS P5K-E/WiFi-AP
• 4GB 800MHz DDR2 (dual channel)
• 1GB Radeon HD 5850
• 320GB 7200RPM HDD

...And installed EndeavourOS. It's a really nice as a desktop/web/streaming/VPN terminal now.

...AND just for fun I got the Games for Windows Live DVD version of Gears of War running on Windows 10 21H2 on my CrossFire Pro setup. Finding all the patches and GFWL redistributables was annoying, but it works great!

Done for now?

Got the Zelda Game & Watch for Christmas, which is awesome (so many secret things!) and includes Link's Awakening, which is also awesome. Been reliving some great 1993 memories with that, while also playing the Switch remake - I think I prefer the original, but the countless quality-of-life upgrades, the expanded fishing game, claw game, and seashell search, as well as the dungeon builder are all really nice additions. Might dig-out my copy of DX and play that next, for research :)

Started Cyberpunk 2077, and it's honestly really good so far. Still overly-ambitious and pretty buggy, still full of questionable design decisions and a script in need of another round of edits, but ultimately a very impressive mash-up of Deus Ex and GTA. I'm in Act 2, and I'm hooked. Worth noting that playing on a PCIe 4.0 NVMe really makes the experience more enjoyable - long load times would've had me giving-up on it pretty early on.

Started Metroid Dread on a whim and immediately got sucked-in - and after a few days of on-and-off play, I think I've nearly finished it. Really slick, love all the little cutscenes, great traversal... Those unforgiving (optional) QTEs though, and those boss fights - didn't expect that in a Nintendo game; I have a feeling a lot of casual players aren't going to finish this one.

Otherwise, I added a Freeload cartridge to my Commodore 128, and I think I'm done with old computer projects for a while. The Commodore is better-than-new with Freeload and the SD2IEC carts; the DOS, 98SE, and XP computers are all done; the Core 2 Quad Linux project is done but underperforms thanks to NVIDIA's drivers and really only exists because I don't have any more Windows licenses; the unnecessary CrossFire Pro build is effectively just a second Windows desktop at this point; and the ridiculous AWE64-centric, SCSI-based MIDI workstation serves its purpose.

So now what? Hunt-down cache for the 486? Find two more matching video cards for the triple-SLI motherboard in the Linux computer and find a Windows License for it?

I'd really like to start using EndeavourOS as a daily option, but I just don't have the hardware for it - my 2nd-gen X1 Carbon's Adaptive Keyboard, detaching the base of my Surface Book, video games games on my 3070, the 2xFirePro V8800s in CrossFire Pro on my i7 950, fakeRAID on my Core 2 Quad... All of them just work better in Windows. From the parts I do have, I'm thinking maybe:

• Core 2 Duo E6750
• ASUS P5K-E/WiFi-AP
• 4~8GB 800MHz DDR2 (dual channel)
• 1GB Radeon HD 5850
• Whatever 7200RPM HDD I have lying around?

I'd go outside more, but it's been really cold :(

Endless

Decent deals in the Epic Holiday Sale + endless coupons:

• Cyberpunk 2077
• Graven
• Outer Wilds
• The Outer Worlds
• Red Dead Redemption II

...All for ~$85 CDN

Still playing Inscryption though :)

Unnecessarily Scuzzy

Overbuilt late-'90s audio production computer:

• 500MHz K6-2
• 320MB PC??? RAM
• MSI A5169MS
• ATi Rage 128 ???
• SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold
• AHA-2940W/2940UW
• 4GB Compaq SCSI HDD
• 8GB WD SCSI HDD
• Ricoh 6200S SCSI CD-RW
• Iomega V2000Si 2GB SCSI JAZ 2 drive
• Windows 2000 Professional

Getting it to boot from the SCSI CD drive was unintuitive and installing Windows was painfully slow, but otherwise works fine as a computer so far. Up next MIDI software and audio connectors.

Just Work

160GB array was faulty; turns-out my ~15-year-old spinning drives are dying 🤷 Got two 250GB drives going reliably, and I was really impressed with how everything just worked. The only out-of-the ordinary thing was switching-over to the non-HWE kernel... And then I tried to play some Steam games and the system crawled (reproducibly) to the point that I was opening a new terminal and killing processes just to get the mouse to respond. Did some digging, and seems likely it's related to the proprietary NVIDIA video driver; so now I don't really care about combing logs and troubleshooting that because that's not the point of this build. Maybe one day, but then maybe I'll take the time to get fakeRAID and 340.108 going on Arch :p

I need a new project. Was thinking of a K6-2-based Windows 2000 build that features an AWE64 Gold because I said it was a decent MIDI synth in an audio gear group on Facebook and they deleted my post... So now I have to prove them wrong and make some music on it.

Finally played Pony Island, and it was good. Stuck on a part in Inscyption - not because I don't know what to do, but because getting to that part feels a little too random after, especially since it slows-down progress significantly after such a fast-paced first few sections. thankfully, the gameplay is still satisfying.

Sisyphean

Finally got to:

• Blair Witch - Decent walking sim, got a few honest scares out of me, and thankfully brief. Didn't really feel the PTSD stuff, and that last section... Ugh.
• A Plague Tale: Innocence - Just started it, but interesting for sure.
• Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order - Soulscharted? Wasn't really what I wanted in terms of gameplay, but fantastic exploration. Might actually play this one again some day.

Picked-up:

• DiRT 4 - Fun, especially for $5; but after playing various configurations, I've concluded that rally games aren't really my thing.
• Inscryption - It's rare that I enjoy a roguelike or a deckbuilder, and this one starts-off as both... But I'm hooked and committed to seeing where this goes.
• King of Fighters IV - Was on-sale, feels good to play (been following this series since the beginning), and some characters didn't make the jump to 3D as gracefully as others... Looking at you, K'.

Revisited:

• Burnout Paradise Remastered - Still ridiculous, still fun, still overwhelming.
• Skullgirls 2nd Encore - Still don't get it.

Process

Basically this... 

1. Downloaded 20.04.1 'cause I wanted to start with 5.4:
• http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/20.04.1/ubuntu-20.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso
  
2. Installed offline
3. Ran:
1. sudo apt update
2. sudo apt install --install-recommends linux-generic
3. sudo apt remove --purge linux-generic-hwe-20.04 linux-headers-generic-hwe-20.04 linux-image-generic-hwe-20.04

...As in speech.

I started with Debian in the '90s, then Slackware, then Ubuntu, then PC-BSD, then CentOS for work, then Xubuntu, then Manjaro, then EndeavourOS. Now I'm trying to find the best balance for my old Q9450 + 8800 GTS, and it looked like Ubuntu was the way: Out-of-the-box NVIDIA fakeRAID support, native kernel support for NVIDIA's proprietary video drivers, and an LTS branch... But then 20.04.3 went to a newer kernel and the video drivers broke - there're patches for that, but I was kinda hoping for something that would just work. Tried 18.04 for fun, but it didn't entirely like the fakeRAID setup and now I'm thinking Ubuntu 20.04 on 5.4 looks like the safest bet to keep that late-2000s hardware relevant until 2030 - if I'm reading this chart correctly.

System is:

• Core 2 Quad Q9450
• EVGA 132-CK-NF79
• 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 RAM (dual channel)
• 320MB GeForce 8800 GTS
• 2x160GB 7200RPM SATA HDDs (RAID 0)

I lied...

PS5 games on sale for $40~$60 CDN, and I haven't bought any. Did get Gravity Rush 2 and Fist of the North Star though... Did I miss anything?

Notice a theme?

• Mooncrash started to feel unwieldy as I got closer to the end and I've let it fall by the wayside.
• Almost done Payback but one of the off-road races feels incredibly broken and just stopped being fun after a few tries.
• Gears 5 is really solid but I ran into one boss fight that I had to quit before I got too angry at it.

Been playing:

• Pumpkin Jack is fun and light and looks great and it won't remember my VSync setting and sometimes forgets my RTX setting and the writing is cringey and the VO is worse and the cinematics are redundant.
• Battlefield V was fine; Nordlys was especially good.
• Call of Juarez: Gunslinger is really fun.
• Soul Calibur VI is ridiculous.
• Dead or Alive 5: Last Round and Dead or Alive 6 are just as accessible and satisfying as ever.

Got on sale:

• DiRT 4
• Flipping Death
• Glittermitten Grove
• The Sexy Brutale
• Street Fighter V Champion Edition
• Walkabout Mini Golf
• Zombie Vikings

Seems Reasonable

Paid ~$210 CAD for non-"PlayStation Hits" physical copies of:

• Bloodborne
• Concrete Genie
• Everybody's Golf (2017)
• The Last Guardian
• inFAMOUS Second Son
• The Last of Us Part II (new)
• MediEvil (2019)
• The Order 1886
• Shadow of the Colossus (2018)
• Until Dawn

Gonna go pick-up these two soon for ~$90:

• Killzone: Shadow Fall
• Persona 5 Royal (new)

...And I'm watching these two on eBay:

• Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise
• Gravity Rush 2

Will get to the actual PS5 games after these, and when they don't cost $90

Ultra Ultra, Echo... Safe to assume that was on purpose?

Missed Echo when it was released, got it on Steam recently, and very impressed so far. A little rough around the edges - audio mix made it kinda tricky to catch some of the dialogue so I turned-on the subtitles and caught a spelling mistake, lost dialogue altogether during one session, got an Unreal Engine crash message early on, there's some weird LOD pop-in, shadows projecting onto thin air, incomplete reflections (and if ever there was a game begging for raytracing...), no ripples in the water - yet I'm invested nonetheless. Such a cool premise and overall slick presentation, genuinely engaging and innovative gameplay mechanics; unless the infodumps get too convoluted or the difficulty spikes, I feel like I'm going to enjoy this one through to the end.

Went back to Prey: Mooncrash before trying Deathloop, and it's good. Didn't like how you unlock the security guard, but otherwise really impressive system overall. I still don't really like roguelikes though.

Got a PS5 Console for $93 CDN... $400 in points at the retailer, $100 in promotional points for spending $400 in points, and $37 in points toward future purchases. Never had a PS4, but since God of War, (maybe) Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Uncharted: Legacy of Thieves Collection are out for or coming to PC, here's what I'm looking to pick-up:

• Bloodborne
• Concrete Genie
• Everybody's Golf (2017)
• The Last Guardian
• Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise
• Gravity Rush 2
• inFAMOUS First Light
• inFAMOUS Second Son
• Killzone: Shadows Fall
• The Last of Us Part II
• MediEvil (2019)
• The Order 1886
• Persona 5 Royal
• Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart
• Shadow of the Colossus (2018)
• Spider-Man Miles Morales Ultimate Edition
• Until Dawn
  

...And maybe Returnal if it's cheap? Really though, Bloodborne, The Last Guardian, and The Last of Us Part II are the focus here.

Oh, and I finished both parts of The Ancient Gods; it wasn't fun by the end. Reddit says there was a bunch of nerfing and buffing since release, and it explains a lot. It was fine, but I very much preferred the main game.

Somethingsomethingjokeaboutthisonegoingto11...

In-place Windows 11 upgrade on the X570 desktop: Fast, simple, slick... Actually kicked it off by accident. Ryzen TPM enabled, no VBS.

Clean installation on Surface Book: Disabled Secure Boot to boot from USB and bypass unsupported CPU warning, had to side-load Surface NVMe drivers, language bar acted all kinds of weird... Wiped and re-installed again, and everything was great. 

Clean installation on 2014 X1 Carbon: Enabled Intel TPM 2.0 over discrete TPM 1.2. Worked fine after a bunch of manual driver updates, but couldn't get the Adaptive Keyboard working properly... Back to Windows 10.

You wait 16 years, and what do you get?

Psychonauts 2 is perfect. The final act of the game felt a little chaotic/contrived/rushed, but also still worked and left openings for all kinds of side-stories, DLC, spin-offs, sequels - phrasing this as such to minimise spoilers, but I can't wait to play as Lili tracking-down brains, or Bob and Helmut recovering bodies, or Lucrecia working for the government... Also, the Bob's Bottles level really got to me; didn't expect things to get that heavy. Couldn't be happier, and it was kinda cool to see my name in the credits.

DOOM Eternal The Ancient Gods - Part One is too difficult at normal difficulty levels. For the first time in my life, I'm tempted to turn the difficulty down; and I'm not happy about it. I'm not sure if the issue is that the game's systems are so incredibly balanced that there's no longer any room for error or if the balance is so far off that it's just not as fun as the main game, but I'm teetering on just not even finishing it despite being at the final Slayer Gate and almost done.

Quake Remastered is fantastic and the new episode is seriously impressive.

The Bethesda-sanctioned DOOM and DOOM II add-ons are really fun - I'd completely missed BTSX!

Went back and played-through Need for Speed (2015) and Payback - both totally solid.

Finally got into Super Mario Galaxy and... Yeah, I dunno. It's really good, but I had way more fun with Odyssey, Bowser's Fury (which was awesome btw), Sunshine, 64... Maybe I should've played it sooner?

That wardrobe, though!

Hadn't been all that focused on any particular game the past few months until I finally got around to Super Mario Odyssey, and then binged that one hard; 363 Moons in 48 hours, and still going. Not sure how I feel about the boss rush post-game content, but I'm gonna try to get to 500. Overall though? Killer app, masterpiece, instant classic, etc... You get the idea.

• The Missing Link was alright; not as bad as I'd heard, but I'd've been fine having never played it.
• Jensen's Stories were fun, but didn't feel as polished as the main game.
• Sam's Story was pretty good, but I preferred the main campaign and The Two Colonels.
• Enhanced Edition is cool, but I really only jumped to a few favourite scenes; not gonna re-play the whole game.
• Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War was fun; single-player offers a solid story with some really cool moments, and the overall campaign has pretty high production values; but it all felt pretty short, and didn't really hold my attention. Did go for both endings though.
• Got DOOM Eternal The Ancient Gods, and it's good; though I'm finding myself getting more confused as they pile more lore onto us - which is disappointing because I really liked where they were going with it. Gonna do some more reading, I guess. Paused for now, while we wait for the RTX update.
• Finally got through DOOM VFR - Really good game, with just a few inconsistently very-frustrating points.
• Wrapped-up Half-Life Alyx, and it was fantastic.
• Walked through Deus Ex: Mankind Divided - VR Experience, and the control scheme... Oh god... Instant nausea. Not worth it.
• Started BONEWORKS, and it's not quite like anything else... Curious to see where they take this.
• Reinstalled Need for Speed Heat, bought an Aston Martin Vulcan, and almost unlocked the FXX-K Evo.

Decided to keep the Sound Blaster 16 and see what I can get for the AWE64 Gold - no bites so far.

Applied the NVIDIA Resizable BAR firmware update.

I dunno... Mostly just wanted to gush about Odyssey, a little. Still need to go back and play both Galaxy games.

Bouncin' around, bouncin' around, bouncin'

Took a break from Metro Exodus after completing the main game and The Two Colonels DLC; will get back to Sam's Story, but went back to Deus Ex: Human Revolution for a change of pace. After many false-starts over the years, I finally wrapped it up and it holds-up. Not bothering with The Director's Cut, and the DLC is fine; but I jumped straight into Mankind Divided before finishing The Missing Link and wow... Just, wow. Cannot believe I slept on that one for almost five years - it's one of the best games of the decade! Ploughed through that, started Breach and Jensen's Stories... So pretty, too! Maxed-out everything at 1080p except MSAA - 60FPS at 4x though. Then I guess it's back to The Missing Link, and then Sam's Story... But I also bought Call of Duty: Black Ops - Cold War because it was on-sale for $50 CDN and it's technically a new single-player Raven game!

Otherwise, I finally got around to testing my Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold, and it works great... So now the question is do I try to get $200 out of that one or my complete Sound Blaster 16? Partial to the OPL3 on the 16, but there're so many more features on the AWE :\

Also, got $700 for my old 3930K+1070 PC... Dropped the price to $800 (seemed fair since you can find comparable new pre-builts for ~$1100) and I got tonnes of interest, but the vast majority was miners offering under $400 just for the video card.

Raptors! ;)

New computer is awesome; very quiet (better airflow in this case, Noctua fans), very fast (the 3070 is no longer bottlenecked!), and the build was mostly uneventful. The amount of pressure required to install AMD's Wraith Stealth is kind of terrifying, needed a BIOS update to get the DOCP setting on my RAM to work, and I accidentally removed my digital Windows license from my Microsoft account but was able to get it back by reviving the old motherboard and logging-in there with my Microsoft account... Microsoft support had told me I was out of luck, but I sure showed them 😅 Kept the PSU and three hard drives from the previous build, replaced the failing 1TB HDD from 2010 with a 2015 one I found in my parts bin, and since my VR headset works with the onboard controller on the new motherboard, the Renesas D720201 PCIe card I picked-up for the old one went to my brother's Z68 build so he could finally hook-up the front USB 3.0 ports on his Meshify C. Also, the power and drive LEDs don't seem to work on this case... Meh.

Speaking of  hard drives, I re-installed Anthem... But on the SATA SSD, so still not sure if PCIe Gen4 would help those load-times. Still fun to jump back into though; hit level 30, started playing the unlocked difficulty levels... Not really worth it; "Hard" seems to be the most casual fun that still yields decent rewards, in terms of currency anyway.

Tried Metro Exodus again, and it doesn't stutter anymore... Still kinda buggy in terms of mission completion conditions and lighting, but I wonder if the sudden performance issues were somehow related to the failing drive :\

Old computer is listed on Kijiji for $1000 CDN OBO; final specs are:

• MSI GeForce GTX 1070 GAMING X 8G
• Intel X-Series i7-3930K (6C/12T, 3.8GHz boost)
• ASUS P9X79
• 32GB (8x4GB) 1600MHz quad-channel DDR3
• Intel BXTS13A
• 2x WD 74GB Raptor 10,000 RPM (RAID 0)
• Corsair CX500
• Lian-Li PC-68

...Only one bite so far, and they were looking to trade; which would be fine, but they didn't have anything I wanted.

Unrelated, but one friend who was looking for a 2060 SUPER or better for Premiere finally gave-up and settled for a 1660 SUPER... Except he couldn't find one of those either. I found two profiteers for him - a 3070 for ~$1000 CDN or a 1660 SUPER for $450 CDN - he went with the latter, and he's happy.

Ten Years!

Started noticing more hard drive noises than usual from my desktop... While the drives were idle. Found a SMART warning on one of my 1TB spinning drives; backed-up the data, pulled the drive, checked the date code... August 2010! Nice :)

Started Below and got back into Knights And Bikes... Both are so great, visually; both have really interesting (albeit very different) narratives... And both have kinda tedious core gameplay loops :(

Buy Low, Sell High

Found all the things in-stock at MSRP or on-sale...

Final build:

• Ryzen 5 5600X
• ASUS TUF GAMING X570-PLUS
• 2x8GB 3600MHz DDR4 CL16 (B-Die)
• MSI 3070 VENTUS 2X OC
• 500GB WD BLACK SN850 PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe M.2 SSD
• 512GB ADATA Ultimate SU800 SATA 6Gb/s SSD
• Samsung HMD Odyssey+
• Audient iD14 (MKI)
• Cooler Master G750M

Just gotta figure-out a case and throw-in some data drives... Would splurge for a LIAN LI LANCOOL II Mesh Performance, but they're sold-out everywhere; saw a few over the holidays, but I balked. Still have that iStarUSA D-400 in the meantime, I guess.

I figure I put ~$500 into my current computer over the past ten years, going from the i7-930+X58 to the 3930K+X79, from the GTX 780 to the 1070... I'm keeping all the other parts, but should be able to get ~$1000 CDN for it after throwing-in a barely-used Corsair CX500 I already have, and an old 7200RPM HDD. Otherwise, it'll go to a friend or family member in need.

Spoiled

Horizon Zero Dawn is really impressive, and I really like it... But after Breath of the Wild, it feels kinda janky; facial animations, falling and climbing mechanics and animations, targeting enemies, superfluous voiceover and dialogue, muddled HUD that gets lost in the background, unreasonably dark areas...  I even kinda miss the stamina meter. I know it's not the same game, but it's hard to not draw comparisons and really only serves to remind me of what a stellar achievement BotW is.

Metro Exodus is just plain broken though; played on the highest settings without issue for a while, and then one day, after loading a saved game, it just started stuttering. Latest drivers, verified the installation, tried safe mode, etc... Still stuttering. Hesitant to re-download it because it's so big. Disappointed.

Duck Season, however, was frigging rad. Going for the seventh ending and then all the extras that unlocks now. Actually got goosebumps, and even yelped out loud more than once... I'm sure I looked like a fool, but it was worth it!

Oh! Finally went through Prey: Typhon Hunter's TranStar VR campaign; good stuff in there!

Finding a Ryzen 5 5600X has proven to be silly, more than anything else. Plenty of local shipments, and the profiteers aren't too bad, but we're in a province-wide lockdown and stores aren't accepting any kinds of online ordering or reservations, aren't answering their phones, and are encouraging customers to just show-up and try their luck... While there are reports of police pulling people over and issuing fines for unnecessary travel. Yeesh.

That's a wrap...

Finished-up with some games...

Control: AWE was good. Nice cliffhanger. RTX is pretty :)

Ion Fury put up a good challenge toward the end, but final boss was frustrating; won't be getting the DLC

Streets of Rage 4 was solid, but I still prefer the old ones. Felt great, music was alright, the final boss was maybe kind of a little too hard, will replay to unlock characters one day.

THPS1+2 was so nice; went through all the stages - didn't 100% it, but will come back to it for fun.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut has aged surprisingly well, though I don't really feel the need to finish it? Gonna give 2 an honest try as well, in anticipation of the RTX update to The Witcher 3.

First Step

3070 overclocks nicely to ~1865MHz from the 1755MHz factory OC. Next step is a case with better airflow, then I think an 5600X+X570+16GB of 3600MHz CL16 DDR4 RAM, then a PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe SSD.

Finished BotW, and it was great. The second DLC pack though? Can't access any of the new story content without going through four camps+shrines where one hit kills us? Sure, but it seems odd that the trial to learn the new melee weapon (to the point that they remove all others) can also be won by wearing Majora's mask, picking enemies off with old ranged-weapons, and save-scumming. It's not impossible to do it properly - I got through all four with minimal out-loud swearing - but it's a noticeable spike in difficulty with an odd workaround, and I saw a number of parents complaining online that they had to pass it for their kids. Such a bizarre choice, to wall-off the main attraction of the $30 DLC while the hardcore options are available right away in what is ostensibly a family game.

"Not today, my good man; I'm feeling saucy!"

The cheapest used 3070s I can find online right now are $900~$1100 CDN (the cheaper of those are Kijiji pick-ups), and the new ones are hovering around $1400~$1600... And I just found a new MSI 3070 VENTUS 2X OC for $799. The same shop had a GIGABYTE 3070 GAMING OC for $769 (higher boost, one more fan, physically larger) as well, but it got sniped as I was adding it to my cart. $799 is a little high (this model started around $750) and I still have reservations about VRAM limitations; but times are strange, I totally got caught-up in the excitement, and when the 6800 street price turned-out to be $999 I got off that bandwagon... Sorry AMD, but I will eventually still buy your Ryzen 5 5600X (or equivalent) to properly support this new GPU.

My brother got me a Steam gift card for Christmas, so I snagged Boneworks, Half-Life: Alyx, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Streets of Rage 4 - all on sale. Finishing BotW first though, and distracted by THPS1+2 because it was on-sale on the Epic Games Store and I had one of those $14-off coupons :) Speaking of, decent free holiday game selection on there, but I already own most of them :(

Oldies

Turns-out all 1660-based video cards have been tough to find lately. Ended-up getting a 1660 Ti for $370 CDN from Best Buy to go into that i7-3820 Flight Sim computer; he says it runs great at 1080p on High :) The other 3820's onboard sound doesn't seem to be working properly - everything detects and output levels look correct, but only hear static - but that's fine because it's gonna be using an external audio interface anyway.

Dusted-off my Commodore 128 over the holidays - 1902 monitor still works great, but 1571 disk drive doesn't seem to be spinning. I plan to fix it, but decided to go with an SD2IEC as well; this one stuck with me because it's cheaper than all the others and appears to have a serial pass-through.

My partner imported the black Game Gear Micro for me, and tracked-down a new NES Classic Edition for a reasonable price... Kinda caught-up in it all now, and tempted to get the blue GG Micro, could maybe justify the SNES Classic Edition for StarFox 2, the quality and selection on the Genesis and TG16 minis are actually incredible, the Neo Geo Mini looks great even if they fucked-up the joystick and the HDMI output, and the Astro City mini... Oh man, that thing looks so neat... But now we're in the $1000 range (not including accessories and peripherals) for a bunch of easily-emulated collector shit that I own the originals of anyway 😅

Oh, and motion controls for BotW in Cemu using my phone over WiFi... Wild.

Two of Three

Got two new old computers from a studio that was decommissioning them; common parts between them are:

• i7-3820
• Cooler Master HSF (Hyper 212?)
• ASUS P9X79
• 4x4GB PC3-10600 (quad-channel)
• Cooler Master HAF (912?)
• LG M-DISC DVD burner

...Otherwise, they have decent 500~600W 80 PLUS Bronze PSUs. There's a third one coming, but they're still using it for a little while longer.

So I added a 500GB 7200RPM HDD to one, and I'm giving it to a friend who really wants to play Flight Simulator 2020 but only has an ancient Mac Book; I figure a 1660 SUPER will serve him well in there. Get a 27" 1080p monitor, toss-in an SSD, and then not really much more to do in terms of upgrades - and  it saves him, like, $500 up-front. Merry Christmas!

The other will likely go to that indie recording studio I mentioned a few posts ago, while the i7-930 will finally go to a friend with many hard drives who wants to build a 14-drive storage server :)

The fun part about these computers, however, was how poorly they were assembled! Upside-down PSUs! Horrible cable management - but there were zip-ties, so they tried and failed! An eight-pin PCIe power connector with only seven pins connected! A CPU mounted 180-degrees-off with both clamps latched and the huge HSF unit tightly screwed-into the motherboard! They couldn't figure-out why it wouldn't boot; I was surprised the CPU hadn't snapped!

You crazy son of a bitch, you did it.

Finally picked-up Breath of the Wild (for Wii U, and got all the DLC) and while I'm sure this isn't exactly a hot take, it's nice to see Miyamoto's original vision finally realised after over 30 years. It stands on the shoulders of a lot of games that came before - and they stood on the shoulders of previous Zelda games, themselves - but it gets it right in such a special way that it all feels so magically organic; classic Nintendo. Also tried-out Cemu and wow... Emulators have a come a long way since I started trying Game Boy games on my PC in the mid-'90s.

Took the copper HSF from my caseless 486DX-33 and installed it on my 486DX2-66 because why not. Also noted that my DX2-66 is an SX807 variant, so it has the SL low power enhancements but no write-back support. Neat. Also dusted-off my Fujitsu FKB4700, but put it away when I realised the key inputs would lock-up the PS/2 port if I tried to use the arrow keys with the right-Shift key... No good for the DOS games :(

As for RX 6800 v RTX 3070... Hrm. In terms of games, the former has a small advantage for now with SAM (and I guess Rage Mode?) but desperately needs to catch-up when it comes to raytracing and super-sampling - and I expect it will, so those are likely non-issues in the long run. What is actually interesting (because it's not upgradeable on the latter) is that the Radeon has twice the VRAM and Infinity Cache. Also curious to see how professional applications start to support AMD. Plenty remains to be seen, but I think Ryzen 5 5600X + Radeon RX 6800 may be the long-term solution.

the Video?

Update from previous post:  Have a feeling that the sweetspot for PC builds is about look something like: Ryzen 5 5600X + RX 6800 + PCIe 4.0 NVMe - that $80 US price-premium seems justified.

Wrapping-up the Porta-Pi build...Fried my 1GB Pi 4B after following the build guide's wiring instructions (crappy USB-C cable?), so I bought a 2GB model (same price as the 1GB model now) and it's running on a separate adapter from the video driver and amp; worked-out a stereo issue with the amp; got creative while manually mapping the six buttons; settled on lr-mame2003 as the main emulator w/fbneo for incompatible titles; had to buy a new crimping tool and soldering iron - both of mine were too big; and the non-removable top panel made working on this vertical unit kind of a pain... But it's pretty cool! Also discovered Cosmo Gang the Video thanks to this project, and I'm pretty happy about it :)

Quakespasm

Arcane Dimensions 1.80 is out and what they've done with Quake is incredible. Play it.

Hotshot Racing is still great fun.

Wrapped-up FarCry Primal, and while it feels a little more aimless than its predecessors, I think it may be my favourite in the series so far.

Porta-Pi build is coming along; just gotta glue some wood, solder the power switch, and build the controls; everything else is gravy.

3D printed drive rails for the Antec case weren't tall enough; need a few more mm for test print #2.

Have a feeling that the sweetspot for PC builds is about look something like: Ryzen 5 5600X + RTX 3070 + PCIe 4.0 NVMe

Nuts :(

So the many-harddrived-computer experiment stalled because I couldn't find all of the drive rails for the Antec Titan 550 case :(

Currently looks like:

• i7-930
• Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 (rev. 2.0)
• 6x2GB PC3-10666 (triple-channel)
• Radeon HD 5850
• 2x7200RPM 320GB HDDs (RAID 0)
• Corsair CX500

I have four 250GB HDDs ready to go for the RAID 10 array, but no way to securely mount them in that case :( After searching for spare parts online, had a bright idea and now my buddy's gonna be printing a set of these for me to try-out.

I did replace the 500GB HDD in my Xubuntu Core 2 Quad with two 160GB drives in RAID 0 though, so that was fun.

Premiere

Got a call from a friend on Saturday asking me to build him a video editing computer real quick; here's what I had by Sunday:

• Ryzen 9 3900X
• Gigabyte X570 UD
• 2x16GB PC4-25600 (dual channel)
• 500GB PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe M.2 (system drive)
• 512GB SATA III SSD (scratch/cache drive)
• 2x Blackmagic Design DeckLink Duo 2
• Seasonic SSR-650FM
• Fractal Design Meshify C

Threw-in my Radeon HD 5450, but recommended he look for an RTX 2060 SUPER down the road, and maybe another 32GB of RAM if he starts working in 8K.

What really got me was how friggin' fast Windows 10 installed on this thing! Like, it only took a few minutes! Also, setting ultra fast boot + Windows fast startup gets it going in a few seconds.

Also, AMD's Wraith Prism Cooler having RGB enabled by default is annoying... You have to manage another cable, take-up a USB header on the motherboard, and install Cooler Master software to turn it off 😒

Minor

New spare parts = minor update to secondary desktop:

• i7-950
• ASUS P6X58D Premium
• 3x4GB PC3-12800 (triple-channel)
• 2x ATi FirePro 3D V8800
• 64GB OCZ Vertex 2
• 500GB 7200RPM HDD
• Plextor PX-880SA
• Antec TP-650
• Lian Li PC-68

Upgrades to parents' desktop, too:

• i5-2500
• ASUS P8Z68V-LX
• 4GB+2x2GB PC3-12800 (dual-channel)
• Radeon HD 6950
• 128GB OCZ Vertex 4
• 1TB 7200RPM HDD
• Corsair TX650
• Lian Li PC-68

And a new basic recording studio computer for my friend?

• i7-930
• Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD5 (rev. 2.0)
• 6x2GB PC3-10666 (triple-channel)
• Radeon HD 5450

...Except that Gigabyte motherboard supports up to 14 hard drives, and I have a bunch of the spinning kind lying around. I also have a pretty big case just sitting there, empty. Maybe a 6Gb/s RAID0 system drive and a 3Gb/s RAID10 data drive? Just for fun? I mean, why not, right?

Also, finished Hexen II and man, that game is all kinds of rough. Need to talk more about that series some time soon; my memories were brought into question after recently playing through the first three games and their expansion packs... Still have to finish-up Portal of Peaevus and Heretic II though. Also, GRAVEN.

Toasty!

The Radeon 8500 in the 9x build just kinda died... Fan spins, but that's it. Replaced it with an 8500LE, but then realised that fan had seized... At which point I looked wistfully at my overheated 9700 Pro. So, in went the GeForce 3 Ti 200... And I quickly noticed that quality control on NVIDIA's 9x drivers seems a little lax; reproducible NVIDIA control panel crashes, a BSOD, a seemingly broken uninstaller... Got it all going eventually, and ran hardware diagnostics just to make sure it wasn't something else causing the instability. Also, the sound effects + CD Audio starting working together in Hexen II for no apparent reason.

Otherwise, I recently completed a project that involved expanding, upgrading, and re-provisioning a Linux-based renderfarm that now collectively sports over 2.7TB of RAM, just over 800 CPU threads turboing up to 3.7GHz, and 84 GPUs delivering over 760 TFLOPs in a single 21-node rack. It gets noisy sometimes... And also kinda warm.

Oh! Hotshot Racing is rad, and I'm really enjoying it!

3114

So going all-SATA on the DFI NFII Ultra Infinity was a fun exercise; finding the correct Silicon Image 3114 controller drivers and getting them onto a floppy disk took a couple of tries - needed the "SATALink" variant 😒 After that, however, Windows XP SP3 was good to go, and all of a sudden I had no more computers to build. Put fresh batteries in all of them, and now it's time to take stock of what's left; see what's worth keeping, what's destined for the e-waste station, what I can give away and what I hope to get a few bucks for.

Anyway, I installed Hexen II and Portal of Praevus on the 98 SE computer and... Yeesh. It's hooked-up to an old 1680x1050 LCD, and the closest video mode the game wanted to support was 1280x960... Which that Pentium II cannot handle on its own. To get GL Hexen running, I had to remove the game's custom opengl32.dll, and then things were pretty great on the Radeon 8500... Except there was no sound; just CD audio. Manually re-installing the sound card drivers via Device Manager got sound working, but not at the same time as the CD audio, so... That's weird? Anyway, the same visual glitches present on the Steam release are still there on era-correct hardware so I guess I'll just play it on steam until I get to the Mission Pack? Ergh.