I’m with you. In fact I’ll say even retro operating systems were better (no bloat, no spyware, easy to understand/configure/mod/hack around), as well as retro Internet (no Javascript crap, no browser fingerprinting/tracking, simpler HTML, super easy webdev) and retro computing (no soldered-on components, PCs were more modular and easy to repair)… heck, planet earth in general was better back then. We’ve been on a downwards spiral since the 2000s. Everything sucks now.
That’s incredible. Your son has far, far, more patience than I ever did. I still haven’t managed to clock most of the games I grew up with, such as Dangerous Dave, Prince of Persia 1 & 2, Wolf3D, Doom 1 & 2, Crystal Caves, Aladdin, Lion King, Jazz Jackrabbit, Mario (NES), Pokemon Red (GBA), Crash Bandicoot (PS1)…
Every now and then I try to clock one of those old games, but then I get stuck and/or lose interest, and move on to something else. Even among recent games, I spent over 400 hours playing BotW and only managed to do two of the divine beasts. I also have over 200 hours in TotK and still haven’t gotten to the first major spirit quest. Similarly, got several hundreds of hours in Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, but never actually completed any of those games.
I think the only game that I recall beating would be the Bio Menace trilogy - which I finally managed to complete as an adult, and that too thanks to DOSBox’s save states. Oh, and Diablo II too, it someone had the perfect mix of action + story + game length, to keep me interested till the end.
Honestly I’ve no idea how people manage to stick to one thing for so long and see it thru till the end, without losing interest or getting distracted by something else.
Given the current pace of development, how long would you reckon it might take them to get rid of the bugs, at least, the annoying game-breaking ones? I don’t mind incomplete content, but game breaking bugs is something I don’t have the patience to deal with. Like, I made the mistake of pre-ordering Cyberpunk - dropped it on day one cause of the bugs and didn’t touch it until three years later, when it was finally in a playable state (for me). Just wondering if Star Citizen would reach that sort of bug-free stage within the next couple of years.
But Bethesda could very well release a Skyrim Extra Special Edition in the interim, and fans will lap it up, no doubt. Jokes aside, there are many large fan-projects in the works which fans are looking forward to, such such as OpenMW, Skyblivion and Skywind, not to mention more “normal” mods for Skyrim itself, so I doubt the interest in the franchise is going away any time soon.
I’m one of the foolish ones that actually pre-ordered the game. Was super hyped for it too, did a countdown till midnight so that I can start playing at launch, and I even live streamed it (and also had a few other streams going on two laptops). Took the day off to play the game as well.
The clock hit 00:00 and less than 30 minutes into the game, I ran into my first bug. I stuck was in a dialog loop and couldn’t get out no matter what I tried, so was for forced to load an earlier save. Then I got stuck somewhere else, or something funky would happen. I’d never been so utterly disappointed in a game until Cyberpunk came along. So anyways, I was so put off by it that I’d decided not to play it any further, until they patched it all up. So the first patch came along, but this time I decided to read the reviews first - still plenty of bugs. Thought I’d wait for the next one, noope, still buggy. And the next one. And the next. And then I decided to ignore the game completely, until not only they fixed the bugs, but also added QoL stuff into the game. Like better AI, better peds, better driving etc. Make the city more immersive. I mean, I had waited for so long, so might as well wait and play until it’s at it’s best version.
So, not only will I not play now, nor when 2.0 comes out, I’ll play it only when Phantom Liberty is out, and will enjoy the game, for the first-ish time, the way it was meant to be played.
Assuming of course that Phantom Liberty isn’t a dud, but having learnt from my previous experience, I might wait a bit after it comes out and see if they release a post-launch patch or something first.
Never again pre-ordering a game… unless it’s a Zelda.
It’s not like you’ll be installing it in there permanently. If you’ve got a Framework laptop or PC case for instance, you could also use it in there. Basically it’s a BYOM (bring your own mobo) situation, so when you’re not gaming on the go, instead of wasting that piece of idle hardware, it could be put to good use. Or vice versa. Maybe you already have a Framework laptop and want to convert it into a handheld gaming device.
The exciting part here is the shell, not the insides. Indeed the Intel boards aren’t that great for gaming, but once Framework start shipping the AMD boards next month, this thing would become a real contender to the Steam Deck, ROG Ally etc. Load up something like ChimeraOS on it and you’d get a near-Steam Deck like experience.
Did you play it on PC or console? If it’s the latter then how were the controls? I’m planning on getting it on console, but I suck at playing FPSes with a controller.
Katamari Damacy - The objective is to roll a ball-like thing called a katamari, to roll up objects, and make the katamari bigger and bigger. You can roll up anything from paper clips and snacks in the house, to telephone poles and buildings in the town, to even living creatures such as people and animals. Once the katamari is complete, it will turn into a star that colors the night sky. Sounds weird, but it’s super fun, trust me. Plus, it’s soundtrack is kickass.
My bad, you’re right - Metroid Fusion was indeed on the GBA. I was playing Prince of Persia 1 on the Genesis - there’s a ROM hack for it which fixes all the issues with the port and makes it behave pretty much like the OG DOS version, with the added graphics of the Genesis version of course.
Sadly the Miyoo is a bit underspecced for the N64 and Gen 6 consoles, so the PS1 is the highest it can emulate. For newer consoles, you’d be looking at something like the Retroid Pocket 3+ or the upcoming Anbernic RG405V, but of course, they’re bigger and more expensive. The main reason I prefer the Miyoo is because of how lightweight it is, which allows me to game for hours if I felt like it, and it’s size makes it easy to carry around too. But I guess it won’t be long before we get to see a future Miyoo, or an alternative in the same form-factor, having the specs to emulate m Gen 6 consoles.
Interesting. My interaction with them wasn’t really helpful. Not for this issue, but I raised an issue that the macro function doesn’t allow you to replay certain buttons (like ‘+’), which limits it’s usefulness. I reached out to them and they said they’ll pass the info back to the team and never heard from them again. I bought this controller specifically for the macro feature (and specifically for being able to replay ‘+’), and without that functionality, the controller is completely useless for me. I already own a Switch Pro controller and I prefer it’s ergonomics/shape much more over the 8bitdo.
Unlike the rest of the answers here, I’ve been mostly retro gaming this week. Got my new Miyoo Mini Plus handheld emulator and it’s been awesome, playing mostly SNES, GBA, Sega Genesis and PS1 games.
Games that I’m playing right now:
Mega Man 7 (SNES)
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (GBA)
The Lord of The Rings: Two Towers (GBA)
Metroid Fusion (GBA)
Prince of Persia 1 (Genesis Romhack)
Crash Bandicoot 1 (PS1)
The awesome thing about the handheld I’m using is that it supports instant saving and game switching, so if I’m getting bored I just press one button and switch to a different game, and jump into exactly where I left off. Or just press the power button and it’ll instantly suspend, and pressing it back is again an instant resume. Other modern handhelds are more involved or not pocketable, so this has been perfect for me (especially considering the low weight of the thing). I think I’ve gamed the most this week compared to any other weeks this year, because of how convenient it is to game on the Miyoo.
I just checked this page and none of the games that I’m playing currently are on it (Diablo 4, Elden Ring, God of War, Jedi Survivor etc). It’s not like the games I’m playing are obscure or brand new either. Not to mention some of the console exclusives that I’m also playing, like TotK on the Switch and Horizon FW on the PS5, but of course, I understand that the cloud provider can do nothing about that.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m quite enthusiastic about cloud gaming as well and looked seriously into it a while ago, because I wanted to upgrade my PC but the upgrade costs were looking pretty high (this was during the peak of the supply chain issues during COVID), also I wanted to break out of the constant and expensive upgrade cycles.
But everything I looked at had some or the other limitation, either they didn’t have the games that I was playing, or the service wasn’t available in my country (eg Shadow PC), or it didn’t allow you to bring your own games (Stadia), or it was working out to be too expensive (Azure VM), or had other limitations such as not supporting ultra-wide resolutions at 60+ FPS. I think for me, being able to play my own games is a big fan requirement for it to work, and the pricing of things like Shadow could work out for me, but those sort of services have limited availability, and rolling your own VM on a public cloud can turn very expensive if you’re a heavy gamer, as I’ve experienced first-hand in Azure.
Therefore, IMO, cloud gaming, while is the future, just isn’t there yet.