Going to stick with portable systems, because a box is a box is a box, even if some are cooler than others (PS2 slim with attached screen, and N64).
#3 Gameboy Advance SP
Loved the compactness of the clamshell design. So much more portable than other systems at the time.
#2 Steam Deck
Windows games on a Linux handheld, plus it runs old games that Win 10 can’t.
#1 PlayStation Portable
This was and will always remain my favorite gaming system. So many great games, movies, a cool disc/cartridge hybrid media format, SD card support for all sorts of stuff, custom firmwares… man, such an amazing system.
I am back on Elite Dangerous after taking some time to focus on Deep Rock Galactic in the first half of the year. I now have a second flight stick and did a little community class on flight assist off flying. Plus there have been lots of updates coming out. Taking advantage of the new engineering changes to build a really good combat ship and then going to focus on getting to Elite in combat probably, which also helps me practice my faoff flying.
If you take a screenshot in horizons and then take the same screenshot in odyssey, you’ll see that blacks are crushed to absolute shit in odyssey. You can even raise gamma to max and you still will not recover that shadow detail. The devs clipped it. They tonemapped the game incorrectly. It becomes blatantly obvious when you play this game on an oled screen haha.
I.e., take screenshot in horizons where tjere is a large shadow or no light hitting a part of your ship. Replicate it in Odyssey. It’ll be obvious. Or try raising gamma to max and you’ll see that zero shadow detail is recovered.
Also idk if you’re familiar with reshade, but if you google and install Lilium’s HDR shaders, it makes it even easier to see how crushed shadows are. It shows you a waveform visual that maps brightness. (Graph works in sdr as well as hdr)
Interesting, I think I’ve probably never noticed because I use night vision pretty much all the time when I’m flying my ship. I’ll look into reshade but I’m playing on Linux via proton and I’m not sure I want to hack more on an already working setup lol
Fair enough. The real issue is when you play in HDR (via inverse tonemapping) on an OLED. It’s just missing sooooo much shadow detail. It’s a well known issue that they never fixed and probably will never fix unfortunately. I’ve been experimenting with ways to recover the shadow detail using reshade add-ons, but so far no luck :-(.
Most good platformers from the 80s and 90s still hold up: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic 3, Sonic & Knuckles, the Donkey Kong Country Games…
The Atari 2600 was before my time, but I bought one at a flea market when I was a kid and was actually impressed by how fun a lot of those games were: Laser Blast, Outlaw, Warlords, and Missile Command, to name a few. The problem is that the hardware is pretty important to the experience. The responsivemess (or lack thereof) of those old controllers is part of the design, so I’m not sure they’d emulate well.
Once you get into the early 3D era, it’s hard for me to say what’s actually good and what’s nostalgia. I love Goldeneye, and it revolutionized the FPS, but it’s probably a pretty bad experience if you didn’t grow up on it. I’m pretty sure Mario 64 is still a legitimately good; it seems like it was still well received on the Switch, and it’s core mechanics have remained basically the same through Sunshine, the Galaxy games, and Odyssey. I think Legend of Zelda: OoT is still legitimately good, but it’s hard to tell. I certainly still enjoy playing it, and it think it’s worthwhile just to see the origins of Z-Targeting, but I’m sure it does feel dated. Either way, you should play the N64 version of Majora’s Mask for sure. It’s still the strangest, darkest Zelda game, and the 3DS version was shit.
Finally, most turn-based RPGs are going to hold up, but I want to make special mention of Pokémon Gold, Silver, and (especially) Crystal. It’s become trendy in the last few years to say these games are actually bad because of a bad level curve, a bad post game, and some other assorted complaints. The level curve criticism is fair, but the post game is great, and most of the other issues are just people who are upset it didn’t follow some of the conventions set by later games. I could say a lot about it, especially if I got into it’s connectivity with RBY, Stadium, and Stadium 2, but I’ll just say it’s still one of the highlights of the franchise, and a contender for greatest sequel of all time. Every fan of the Pokémon should play Crystal at least once.
Favorite: Steam Deck, it’s my favorite piece of gaming hardware I’ve ever owned. The controls are fantastic, it’s now frustrating to use other controllers that don’t have back paddles, gyro, or track pads.
Least favorite: cheap off-brand controllers, with bad tactile buttons, sticking buttons, analog sticks that drift, analog sticks that only register 8 directions, etc.
Also, Wii U. I have some mixed feelings on it because I have some good memories with the system, but the hardware never paid off. Their were almost no games that made use of the gamepad screen in a way that wasn’t just a gimmick, generally the only real advantages of it were being able to play on a handheld screen while the TV was being used (a feat that the switch and steam deck so far better) and being able to have split screen multiplayer where the players can’t see each other’s screen (limited because you only have 1 game pad, and the deck struggles to do two different rendered screens for many games, with games like Hyrule warriors having to cut the enemies in half when doing split screen).
Nintendo DSi - The DS just had such an incredible library, with tons of unique titles you could never experience elsewhere. Though the sad thing about how unique it was is that... you can't properly experience a lot of these titles elsewhere. Emulation just isn't the same. While it came out very late and wasn't worth upgrading to if you already owned an earlier model, the DSi was a very nice and sleek evolution on the hardware. Much more softmod-friendly too.
Miyoo Mini Plus - Bought this last year on sale as an impulse buy. Ended up liking it so much I wish I'd bought a more expensive model with analog sticks. My ultimate dream is to someday get something that runs SteamOS in this form factor.
My custom built fightstick - Put this together last year to replace my old Hori RAP4. Really happy with how it turned out! Love the GP2040-CE, I used to have to go through an adapter to use the HRAP4 on Switch and I can feel the difference not having that added latency anymore.
Hard for me to name least favorites, because I haven't owned a system I actively disliked, and I don't wanna just say CD-i or N-Gage or whatever. But I guess I'll list ones that I have mixed feelings on:
Wii - The Wii had a few great games. It also had a lot of duds. The saddest thing about it is how many games had to shoehorn waggle gimmicks in, and how few of them actually did it well.
Steam Deck - As a Linux nerd that wants to see the platform grow, I love that the Steam Deck exists. It's arguably the most important thing that has happened to Linux gaming. It just isn't for me at all. It's too big to be a handheld, I grew up on a Game Boy Color and I still love curling up with handhelds in bed, but this doesn't feel cozy to play with at all. I do occasionally use it + dock as a portable setup I can take to FGC events, or when I have guests I'll sometimes hook it up to the TV for Jackbox, but it mostly gathers dust the rest of the time.
Switch - Great library, and the hybrid form clearly worked out for Nintendo just because they don't have to divide their output between two platforms. But like the Deck, it's not what I want in a handheld, mine doesn't leave the dock. It's also rather frustrating how many bad ports the system got, I wish developers would simply stop trying to port games it clearly can't handle - especially when there are plenty of older titles in their back catalog that I'm sure could have good ports but get overlooked. And don't get me started on JoyCons!
Them's Fightin' Herds - Glue Cup was short on commentators this week, so I volunteered to fill in. Been a long time since I've done proper commentary, honestly missed it a lot.
Kitsune Tails - Cute little platformer, but maybe a little too on the nose in just how much it copies from SMB3. I think they didn't need to put Kuribo's Shoe in there.
Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers - Liked the demo a lot, but my opinions are already a little more mixed on the full version. It has cool ideas, but it feels like there's just not enough player agency, and a lot of ways to get stuck in stalemates. Maybe I need to give it a little more time to figure out strats I'm missing.
Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Casual practice, no cool clips worth sharing this week. Or maybe I just don't feel like dumping my SD card right now.
Splatoon 3 - Also just practice sessions.
Slay the Spire - The usual.
Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Running out of things to say here.
DS-i: just a lot worse than the lite imo. The camera and the few dsi downloadable games were not worth losing GBA back compat
PlayStation TV: had potential but was just a worse vita and mediocre streaming box.
Piboy: a weird raspberry pi 4 based handheld I had by a company called experimental pi. It was actually kind of cool, but they had their own custom software needed to run on the screen and they were really bad about getting fixes out, and some patches would brick the machine iirc. The company seems to be defunct now. The website is a 404 now
DS Lite: maybe it’s because it was my first gaming console I bought with my own money as a kid. But this thing is such a trooper. Looks beautiful clamshell and the battery some how is still good today, almost 20 years later. Works real well with game carts too!
GameCube: I’m such a sucker for Nintendo but this thing was so portable and had a phenomenal wireless controller if you had it. I loved this console and the mini disks were so fun until I lost my case full of them.
Switch Lite: I know this isn’t a common one but the weight and the power behind it is amazing to me. I’ve always wanted a super portable console that doesn’t weigh a lot. The regular switch hurts for me to hold too long even with grips.
Least Favs:
PS2 slim: this little shit barely worked. At one point the slim would stop working where I’d have to open it, spin the disk like I was pull starting a lawn mower. It also scratched half my disks for no reason. The OG was a tank.
OG DS: bulky pain in the ass. Felt like holding two GBAs glued together.
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