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...