Sounds a lot like Hypnospace Outlaw, which came out a few years ago and had you exploring a fictional Internet from the mid/late-90s era on an OS designed to mimic Windows 95/98 (with an upgrade to an XP-like desktop later in the game). You were basically a mod/censor who went around and busted people for copyright infringement and stuff. Also a real nostalgia trip if you miss that kind of aesthetic.

I never owned a 32X, and I’ve only tried one or two games in its library through emulation. From what I’ve tried and seen, at least what was released for it barely qualifies as anything one would call “32 bit” by looking at it, it just pushes the Genesis slightly beyond the graphical capabilities of the SNES. It only existed in the first place because Sega of America and Sega of Japan never communicated properly so SoA had no idea SoJ was working on the Saturn, so SoA made the 32X to prolong the Genesis’ life span until a proper 32-bit console could be developed, and THEN they found out about the Saturn, but STILL tried to push it as Sega’s 32-bit solution, which was rejected soundly by SoJ in favor of the Saturn, and SoJ only approved the 32X for those stopgap purposes while they readied the Saturn for Western release. SoJ weren’t right about what would appeal to the Western market very often, but they did at least get that right. The Saturn didn’t sell well in the Western market, but it easily trounced the 32X in every way (and actually showed what 32-bit hardware could do without being shackled to an aging 16-bit console as an add-on). The 32X pulled Virtual Boy numbers and had about as long a lifespan and only a slightly larger library. Really an apt comparison: two consoles that failed spectacularly to deliver on their graphical promises, were rejected by the market, and became the biggest hardware flops in each company’s history for good reason.

You have a narrow taste in games and that’s perfectly OK, nothing to be ashamed of at all. Enjoy what you like. You have no obligation whatsoever to play the newest, most popular thing just to keep up with the gaming Joneses. The list of popular games I haven’t tried myself is MUCH longer than the list of them I have played, either because they don’t appeal to me or I just don’t have the spare time or money, and I am 100% fine with that. I buy the games I know I’ll put time into and enjoy and don’t worry about the rest.

Checks out. I’m the same as others have mentioned, after work I’d rather just tune out and watch someone play a game (or have it on in the background) than actually build up the mental strength to play one myself, or at least a game that has any challenge to it, most days. If I play a game on an evening after work, I’m usually just cruising the Paldea region in Pokemon hunting for shinies or some other interesting pokemon to catch. I can just shut my brain off, move my character around, and look for a different colored pokemon.

TBF, the Smash Bros community brought their all-but-destruction on themselves. The rest is pretty valid, though.

A better question would be which one doesn’t, the list of those who don’t would be a lot shorter than those who do in some way, shape or form. All three major console companies, any second party devs associated with them, and most major third party console or PC devs and publishers pull some sort of anti-consumer BS or another. The wall of shame includes the likes of EA, Ubisoft, Capcom, Square-Enix, Activision Blizzard, and many more. One of the huge selling points of BG3 was that it was a major release that didn’t have anything in it designed to screw fans over, and it was (deservedly) greatly praised and rewarded by the fans for it, to the point that other jealous devs/publishers freaked out about the future of their business if more of them followed suit. That should tell you all you need to know.

Pokemon, either Pokemon Sword or Pokemon Violet, I would have to look at the Switch itself to compare, but last I looked at either one it was around 400-something hours. Shiny hunting can be a surprisingly cozy time-waster, lol.

I too am a 3D screen enjoyer on the 3DS. But I don’t really play fast-moving games where the 3D would create vision issues.

As many have said, it’s all about the games. How well the WiiMote functions in a game is largely dependent on the actual game as well. Nintendo pretty much showed the peak of what they can do with the Wii Sports games, and there are a few other games that use the motion controls well, but they tend to be the minority. That said, as a traditional controller it’s not the worst thing in the world, and you can still use a Pro controller, the classic controller attachment or a GameCube controller for more traditional controls. The Wii library can be underrated due to the prevalence of shovelware, but there are great games like the Mario Galaxy games, Mario Kart Wii, the last good Mario Party before Superstars, the original versions of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, the aforementioned Wii Sports games, the second Mario Strikers, the best of the New Super Mario Bros games, Metroid Prime 3, Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn (if you can afford them), DKC Returns, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland, Kirby’s Epic Yarn (another game that used the motion controls well) and many more. (As an aside, I think the Wii U will also be known as a console with an under-rated library down the road.) Sadly, due to its perception and underpowered hardware for its generation, there’s not much actually good third-party software for it, but Nintendo themselves supported the Wii more than adequately.

I would imagine Astro Bot and Balatro would have to be the frontrunners given their reception and popularity.

Due to my financial situation I shouldn’t be buying any games right now, but this is so tempting to buy anyway.

The YouTube channel Stop Skeletons From Fighting made an entertaining and informative series of videos on the Zeebo and its games. Definitely recommend it.

Kinda weird of me to be throwing this out there as a longtime Linux user, but TBF XP was quite good too, maybe even better for its time than 7.

Lutris does most of its updates from within the app itself, so it only really needs packaged releases when there’s an update that can’t be done from within itself.

It would probably also have to run on Red Star OS. It runs well enough on Linux with Proton, but would they have Proton?

Believe it or not, the Catholic Church is far less into the “Satanic Panic” idea that anything that mentions magic and stuff is evil and should be avoided than most Protestant Christian churches, especially the Evangelicals. Pretty much the only thing they consider sinful outright in the media is porn, otherwise you’re just advised to avoid stuff that influences you to commit other sins. This includes things like Baldur’s Gate 3. If it’s not influencing you to sin, it’s not a sin to play. Same with Harry Potter and other stuff like that. It’s just some extreme folks in the Church, influenced by the Evangelicals, who push the Satanic Panic farther than the Church officially teaches and give the Church a bad name in that regard. Lots of priests are sci-fi/fantasy/gamer nerds, and Tolkien (author of Lord of the Rings) was a faithful practicing Catholic.

The only annoyance I had with the stages in SA2 was that it felt like the Dark story had too many Eggman stages and not enough Shadow stages, or at least the Eggman stages were too long and the Shadow stages were too short, where the Hero story felt more balanced.

Exactly. This has much more to do with pirating games, especially before release, than any emulator crackdown. He’s the poster child of every reason Nintendo has used to go after anyone not using legit hardware. And frankly, I think more people than many are comfortable admitting are like this guy: they use emulators primarily for piracy. I’m not 100% totally against emulation, but that’s where we need to point companies like Nintendo who are hyper-aggressive with their IPs to the real target: illegal ROM sharing sites and other avenues of game piracy, instead of the emulators. People who are emulating just for backup/preservation of games, as many claim they are (and I don’t have a problem with), shouldn’t really have an objection to the real pirates going down.

Well, play with fire enough and you’ll get burned. No sympathy from me.

They already did this with the classic Sonic games (Sonic Origins) and removed them from any new Steam copies of the Genesis/Mega Drive Classics collection. I doubt they’re working on all the games in their library, but it may be enough of them that they just decided to pull the whole collection rather than leave it so gutted out. Sucks, but yeah, that’s the way it goes. That said, Shining Force remaster please? That would be awesome.