Seven years, and totally worth it!

UFO 50 is fantastic. So many immediate standouts, and I've already finished Camouflage, Mooncat, Night Manor, and Vainger. Next is likely gonna be Porgy, Valbrace, or Mini & Max.

Vainger is essentially Metroid x Metal Storm, so I went back to the latter and it's wild - never got very far on my actual cartridge, so I may have abused some savestates elsewhere to finally finish it; but I honestly couldn't imagine the amount of practice it would've taken otherwise.

Started The Adventure of Link over again and I still hate it; the save system makes it clear that it's an early Soulsborne, and... Yeah, that explains why.

Garoyle's Quest II was decent, but I think I prefer the Game Boy and SNES games.

Finally tracked-down copies of Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure for SEGA CD and Windows 95, so that's the best of either version of the game - GBA, SNES, 32X, and Jaguar just aren't the way to go; the latter two are alright but if it's not SCD or Win95, then it's gotta be Genesis.

My parents' old LG F4NR started "charging" while unplugged, so I went looking for a replacement. Their carrier offers a ZTE Cymbal 2, but wouldn't sell it to them without changing their plan... So I grabbed a new T-Mobile CAT S22 Flip for ~$87 CDN on Prime; it's so weird, and I kinda really like it.

Performed a clean installation of Windows 11 24H2 and wow is it awful... All of the offers and inconsistent question formatting, all of the unnecessary user account synching across so many services and apps, OneDrive... And all of of it constantly popping back up days and weeks later. I know none of it's new, but it's all just compounded so much over the past few years that it's become so heavy.

Decided to go with a Hall effect kit for my drifting DualSense (still mad about that) but then I ended-up replacing both joysticks with GuliKit TMR modules, and... I dunno, just feels neat :)

Minty

Found a copy of SaGa Frontier 2, but the guy was asking a wild price because it was "mint condition" and had "never been played"... Could've just gotten a sealed one instead. He wouldn't budge, but then I found one on eBay that was local - plus I had a $10 coupon.

Found a sealed copy of Astral Chain at a trade show for pretty much retail; haven't opened it yet, but I'm gonna. Also caught WarioWare: Move It on sale. Also happened across a copy Quake 4: Special DVD Edition for $2 at a flea market.

Found an Amiga 500 with a Keelog power supply for under $50,000,000! Seriously, everything on eBay is $500-and-up after shipping, taxes, and duty; untested, no PSU, PAL, cracked, missing parts, and/or modified to hell... But this one is a stock A500 running Kickstart 1.2 for hundreds of dollars less than anything else, plus the seller was nearby. I still need to settle on a display solution (just using the monochrome output to my 1902 for now) and figure-out the best way to get disks going on it, but otherwise I think I've completed my vintage computer journey. Final(?) lineup is:

• 8-bit
• Atari: 800XL
• Commodore: 128
• 16-bit
• Atari: 1040STFM
• Commodore: Amiga 500
• DOS/Windows 3.1: Digital DECpc LPx (i486DX2-66)
• Windows 98 SE: 300MHz Pentium II w/AGP GeForce 3 Ti200, PCI Voodoo Banshee
• Mac OS X: Dual-1GHz Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver 2002)
• Windows XP: Athlon 3200+ w/Radeon X1950 Pro
• Windows Vista/7/8/8.1/10: Core i7 950 w/2x ATi FirePro 3D V8800 in CrossFire Pro

...But yeah, in terms of simple solutions, RGB-to-SCART-to-HDMI plus a Gotek starts around $100. I'm thinking the simplest first step, however, is to find a Workbench disk and play around in monochrome, then decide how to proceed... Or maybe give this a shot.

Classic

DOOM + DOOM II is a welcome update. Legacy of Rust is epic, though the default music is kinda bad. Voxel Doom II w/ Parallax Textures is still the way to go though... And Doom Resurrection may be my second favourite :) Also, curious to see what Randy Linden's come-up with for the latest DOOM SNES next year.

Silent Hill: The Short Message was fine; didn't do anything groundbreaking as far as I could tell, but was suitably creepy.

Demon's Souls (PS5) is pretty. I still don't get it. Was only $20 though.

Borrowed my brother's 1TB Xbox One S to finally play Halo 5, and once I logged-in to it I was reminded that I owned Killer Instinct Classic & Killer Instinct 2 Classic; never got to play them before, so that was neat. Also, two hours to install Halo 5 from disc and update over a 100Mbps Internet connection... Only to find-out I never played Spartan Ops and have no idea what's going on, so finally installing The Master Chief Collection. Also, I'm gonna buy Crimson Dragon; always wanted to try that one.

Oh, and found a complete copy of Legend of Mana that wasn't ridiculously expensive! Not interested in the remaster; don't like the new backgrounds at all.

Speaking of remasters, still kinda miffed about The Last of Us Part II, Persona 5 Royal, and now Until Dawn - but thankfully one is a $10 upgrade, one is effectively just a framerate boost, and one is such an overhaul that I'm kinda happy sticking to the original vision.

It got confused...

The left stick on my DualSense started to drift left after just over a year of light use; tried a few things to clean it out, but not rushing to disassemble it... And then my partner got me a PS5 Slim (with a Disc Drive) for my birthday, so that helped :) Hooked it up to my AW2721D, set it to 1440p/120Hz/HDR, started ASTRO's Playroom, grabbed the free Matrix and Silent Hill games, downloaded my compatible PS3 games, popped-in a Blu-ray movie - everything was going great, but then video and audio started cutting in and out with horrifying flickers and pops once I exited the movie. Had to navigate through the flickering to change the resolution setting to anything but "Automatic", and that fixed it. Not fun. Anyway...

• ASTRO's Playroom - Fantastic tech demo and pack-in; best exclusive on the console to date, and the follow-up looks like it's going to give Super Mario Odyssey a run for its money.
• The Matrix Awakens - Really impressive.
• Flower - Better than ever!
• OlliOlli - Works well on the big screen.
• Silent Hill: The Short Message - Haven't really dug-in yet, but hey, it's free.
• Sound Shapes - Sad that the servers are gone, but really glad this still exists.
• The Unfinished Swan - Didn't finish it on PS3 or Vita... Third time's the charm?

Otherwise, restarted Kirby & the Amazing Mirror - still kind of overwhelming, but I feel like I have a better handle on it this time. Also finally played through the Cryptmaster demo and I'm into it; plus you can fart, so that's neat. Lastly, I missed the last few sales on Disney's Illusion Island and had been waiting for another, but it looks like it might've gone out of print(?) so I grabbed a copy.

Attenuation

Upgraded my parents' place to IPTV because their service provider was forcing them to migrate from their old mixed analog/digital service. One of their TVs was simple - 4K and Dolby Digital stereo over HDMI; the other is a 57" 1080i set and only has DVI, component, S-Video, composite, or coaxial... It was also connected (thankfully) to a DVD player + 5.1 A/V receiver combo... Which lacks any digital video I/O. Ended-up with the coaxial cable going into an attenuator, then a surge protector, then the new modem, then Wi-Fi to the cable box, then HDMI to one of these, then an HDMI-to-DVI adapter to the TV alongside TOSLINK to the receiver. Already had everything but the extractor, $35 is cheaper than a new TV, and 1080i is just fine. The service provider, to their credit(?) did offer us an HDMI-to-composite extractor... Ergh.

Finished Lady Sia... It is not a good game, but it is interesting.

Finished Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue - smaller and simpler than I'd expected, and the final boss rush is annoying; but still not a bad game. Looks better than Back from the Sewers, and Fall of The Foot Clan is still my favourite.

I restarted Final Fantasy II/IV and V on SNES alongside III/VI, and they all hold-up; actually having a hard time focusing on just one.

Also finally started playing-around with the Samurai Shodown RPG translation (been waiting for this one since the '90s) and Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition (slick!)

Passing Breeze

So Landstalker doesn't get any less annoying toward the end... Still not done.

Phantasy Star is way more impressive than I realised; seriously, a new translation and an automap would perfect this as an all-time classic... Which is already a thing, I'm now reading, in the Switch release... And it's from M2 because of course it is; they're the best. Kinda wishing I'd started it there, but I'm halfway through, so... Ergh.

Anyway, before I get completely distracted, I want to write about how I got distracted from Phantasy Star by Phantasy Star IV and ended-up ploughing-through it pretty quickly. Really good game, but not sticking with me after the fact - at least not like how the first two SaGa games, various Final Fantasy games, pretty much all of the Ys games, or the Personas have... It's weird. I've at least tried most of the Phantasy Star series, and IV is wonderfully streamlined - top-notch traversal, combat options, enemy design, and cutscenes layered on top of an expertly distilled collection of franchise hallmarks makes for a breezy and mostly-accessible (download the manual) RPG that I very much enjoyed... But I dunno; I feel like it's gonna be another Golden Sun or Bravely Default for me, where I found a lot to like but just kinda moved on afterward.

Speaking of moving on, I'm finally tackling Final Fantasy III/VI in earnest.

Unrelated: Glad that OutRun2006Tweaks exists; been happy with my XBOX copy, but now it's 1440p@240Hz!

Also, I think I don't like Alan Wake II... I'm trying, and it's really nifty, but I'm just not getting into it and I'm a third of the way through it now.

I'm looking for a...

Got what I wanted out of Redfall; gunplay got boring, exploration got boring, story was boilerplate by the end, and the last boss... Yikes. There's a good game in there, but Arkane Austin did not get to realise it. The Blackwood House side-story and the like were neat, and the other three bosses were alright, but yeah, moving on...

Found a Logitech MK850 (minus the M) for $8.49 instead of ~$75 on eBay, and a Microsoft LifeCam Studio for $6.99 ($30~$40 on eBay) at a thrift shop. Still looking for a new mouse; found another Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical (mine's getting tired after some 20 years) for cheap, but decided to keep looking - I hear good things about the Logitech G203. Need a numpad, too - the C64 Edition of the 8BitDo Retro 18 Mechanical Numpad is tempting.

Landstalker's not as bad in terms of perspective-issues making jumps as confusing as the reviews or the intro animation might suggest, but I am getting kind of tired of the game's jumping puzzles on the whole; it's all doable, the combat's fine, and the puzzles are neat - but it becomes a little too frustrating when you know the solution and the execution is the only issue. I've skipped at least one puzzle room because I looked-up the reward and decided it wasn't worth it. I'm almost through the Lake Shrine, so I should finish it... But it's just not winning me over like it was at first.

Otherwise, I started a Phantasy Star game for the umpteenth time (the original SMS release, in this case) and I'm about a third of the way in now. Always had a weird relationship with those games - could never get into any of them, and I'm not sure this is going to change things. There's a classic grind here, and I might check-out the Genesis titles again after this - but I don't think I'll ever be able get into the outright grindfest of the PSO/PSU/PSP games.

BioWare, Arkane, Rocksteady...

Got Redfall for, like, $12 a while ago. Installed it when Arkane Austin closed. I liked Anthem, but I got bored of it once I saw everything; this feels much the same. Disappointing, but not awful. Feels like Arkane-light.

Started Landstalker on Genesis... Again. Looks like I'm actually gonna finish it this time though. Really good game, surprisingly well-balanced, and definitely worth playing. I would've liked a better translation and less opportunity to miss important stuff... But seeing as how it's a proto-open-world, I guess that's something I shouldn't really be complaining about. 

Snagged Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon for $30 at Walmart.

Found a local guy selling a complete copy of PC Genjin 3 for a reasonable price; way better than $1000 for the censored NA release or $1800 for the CD release and its choppy sprite animation. Same guy also had an Arcade Card DUO and Tengai Makyō: Kabuki Ittou Ryoudan, so that was a nice surprise to bring home to my DUO-R and Avenue Pad 6 :)

Masochists

Finally got a reasonably-priced, sort-of-locally-available keyboard that comes with Cherry MX Clear switches! It's only 87%, but I can add a numpad later. The included double-shot PBT keycaps are fine so far, and now I can just replace them instead of having to assemble the whole damned thing. Also, no RGB :) Was on a 100% with Outemu browns that I got for free, and I liked it fine - but no more loudly bottoming-out!

Wrapped-up Resident Evil: Village - stunning game, especially in HDR; visceral and dynamic gameplay; decent story with a tenuous connection to the series (this event that started 100 years before this game is the impetus for the rest of the series up to this point and nobody mentioned it until now and also it's over now); solid vocal performances; ridiculous dialogue; horrible nomenclature. I still hate surrendering to the performance-based combat and supplies systems, but it's all worth it here. Lots of optional stuff to hunt for, The Mercenaries is fine and a good way to unlock bonuses for multiple story playthroughs (which can really differ from each other), and don't skip Shadows of Rose - House Beneviento is a real highlight in both the main game and the DLC.

Moved-on to The Evil Within, and it's everything I hated about Resident Evil 4: now with more bulllshit! ...And people seemed to just lap it up upon release 🙄 I'm about a third of the way through now, and the stealth aspects are too powerful to not simply rely on, too many traps to maintain balance with other gameplay options, and every aspect of the randomisation is so random that it starts to feel rogue-like. I get that it's its own thing insofar as we're given a playground to learn and then leverage as we see fit, but being so unforgiving that you are expected to die is just... So it's effectively a Soulsborn roguelike? Great. One reviewer said they died hundreds of times and still appreciated it, but I would've preferred a game that offered some challenge with opportunities to get creative, not a choice between 200 deaths and a casual mode. The story's still coalescing, so I'm reserving judgement on that for now, but it's all losing me... Also, having to launch the Epic Game Store through Steam to get my DualSense to work in-game as well as setting my 240Hz display to 60Hz just to make things playable isn't awesome, but understandable for a ten-year-old game.

Anyway, finally finished Beyond Oasis after 30 years... Lots of vague memories bubbling-up to the surface, but I don't think I ever finished it before. Regardless, still looks great, especially considering the hardware; controls are deep albeit stiff; hit detection and jumping puzzles are as frustrating as ever; music and sound design is delightfully weird while still being suitably epic; a few screens are particularly annoying, but overall still worth your time. I know for sure that I never finished Legend of Oasis though, so that's next.

Vampire: Master of Darkness was brutal at times, but overall a solid clone.

The Makai Toushi SaGa remake was everything I wanted as a big fan of the original.

Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru didn't disappoint.

Still working on EverOasis, but nearing the end and having fun despite things dragging every now and again.

Iconic

Came across an old Acer Iconia W700P, battery said it was healthy but wouldn't charge, SSD would handle clean OS installations and then fail to boot consistently, Acer's BIOS-update download links are dead, disassembly was brutal (so much adhesive, so many annoying cable runs), and I finally just gave-up on it figuring something's not working on the motherboard. Would've been a cool little tablet PC; ran Linux really well...

...But then someone gave me an (also old) HP Stream - 14-ax010ca (ENERGY STAR) and despite a dual-core/single-thread CPU and a 32GB eMMC for storage, that thing is not bad at all when running EndeavourOS (Windows 11 was a different story) plus it comes in a delightful blue shell :) I think I may just carry that around for meetings to freak people out.

I was given a box of old video games with along with the Stream, and this is just what I'm choosing to keep from it:

GC:

• Baten Kaitos
• Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix
• Donkey Konga
• Pikmin
• Pikmin 2
• Star Wars Rogue Leader

PS2:

• Dirge of Cerberus
• Haunting Ground (!!!)
• Radiata Stories

XBOX 360:

• LEGO Rock Band
• Rock Band 3
  

...And the rest should net me $100~$300

Translated!

I've already talked about Sylvan Tale here, but now I'm going through Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru (delightfully weird) and Makai Toushi SaGa (my childhood!) before finally getting around to Mother 3.

Makai Toushi SaGa is especially nice though; what a great remake to a cultural touchstone, warts and all. Criminal that it's stuck on the WonderSwan.

Finished Gargoyle's Quest, may have abused some save states along the way, and what a gem! Flawed like so many of its contemporaries - this one is just full of character and good ideas, and deserves a modern take.

Played around with Mega Man World 5 DX; impressive, though the Mega Man games still just don't really do it for me. I kinda liked IV on both platforms, I liked the Game Gear one, I liked Rockman & Forte... I'm not sure why, but the series just hasn't clicked with me.

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.