Oh, I had to go look up what Evercade is. I thought this was going to be the rumored remasters of these games.

Evercade seems interesting, but it’s kind of a strange concept. Like a generalized nostalgia for a console that never existed. I think if I’m not playing games on their original hardware, I would rather emulate on a retro handheld than pretend that I’m getting an authentic retro experience off a ROM on a newly produced cartridge for a modern device. This is like a compromise, I guess? Anyone here liking Evercade?

I don’t know anything about this game/series, but that looks like such a cool bundle. If I found that as a kid, I would be hyped as hell to play it. Can just imagine unfolding that packaging with all the discs would feel like opening a treasure chest.

This kind of thing didn’t used to bother me at all before it very much bothered me and now I’m somewhere in the middle. I think cartridges/discs for consoles should not require an Internet connection to play them. That said, this isn’t the PS2 era anymore. Many games release with patches day 1 and most will have at least some updates post launch. A lot of games kept offline end up missing out on a ton. Keeping a physical copy of a game is only preserving a portion of the game for a future without the servers to supply the final version, which is my main concern when it comes to physical vs digital media. We still have to rely on hacked consoles running custom firmware or emulation to properly preserve games.

The Oracle games had GBA releases? Wow, that’s news to me.

Starting to think Lego finally realized how big the adult nerd merch market is and now they’re all in. Look I’m sure this set makes certain demographics on the Internet very happy, but it just highlights how different Lego is these days. For better or worse, Lego would never have produced this set 10 years ago. It’s an awkwardly rendered head of a videogame character and that’s it. Fuck, I’m gonna rant now.

I know it’s been said a million times, but I really miss old Lego themes untied to other brands. I’m aware that Star Wars and other IP saved the company from going under 20+ years ago, but they’re not a struggling business anymore. They don’t need to be making displays of pop culture references instead of original concepts to stay afloat; they’re doing it because it’s insanely profitable. Just make something new, please. I don’t even want “old Lego” nostalgia fan service with revived legacy themes. Just do something other than “city” that isn’t based on some other company’s media.

I know it’s just an announce video to raise money, but those animations are rough. Yes, gameplay should come first, but if they’re looking to attract a modern audience they really need to make their visuals a priority early on, especially when one of the biggest selling points of Chibi-Robo was the charm of the friendly little robot.

You forgot the holy battle pass for exclusive creature skins. That’s too pessimistic. Maybe it’s been a while since I played them, but I think Black & White 1 + 2 had the scope of what an ambitious indie game is capable of today. Or a (these days) rare “AA” budget game. A modern B&W could be similarly scaled to the originals, but expanding on them creatively. Though of course the IP would never be granted to indie devs if anyone still holds the rights of Lionhead Studios.

Black & White 3 should open on these guys finally reaching new land where the next god begins.

Definitely waiting for the Miyoo A30 to get Onion.

I re-played the first a few years back and it’s one of the very few games I’ve 100%'d. Despite the years long gap since my last time playing, it still felt like I just jumped back into the world. So far I’m liking the new characters, but I do miss the original cast of camp kids.

I will say the constant references to the in-between VR exclusive game is frustrating. That feels like a crucial bit of story being dangled over my head that I know I’m never going to see because a VR headset is just not in the cards for me for at least the next few years. Maybe I just need to watch a Let’s Play.

This is probably one of the more active communities I’m in, actually. Lemmy’s just not that big, I guess? And that’s fine with me. I don’t need an endless scroll of posts daily. I catch up on my subscribed pages within 20 minutes each day. But if someone wants to encourage more conversation I’m all for it.

As for what I’m playing this month, I just got a used Steam Deck and that’s dramatically opened up opportunities for me to play through my PC games that I haven’t gotten around to. Started Psychonauts 2 and I’m pretty impressed with how little Double Fine had to change since 2005. It feels like 20 years just never happened and it’s so far a very natural progression of the first game. Having a great time with it.

If this project gets finished this might be how I finally play a Mega Man game for the first time.

Jak 2 (OpenGOAL) on the pre-owned Steam Deck I bought on Tuesday. Just very excited to be playing PS2 games on a portable device.

Great water

Dang, I don’t like heavy use of the shoulder buttons as those tend to be the first to go. I do want to check it out. As far as fullscreen goes, not sure, but maybe it’s two different resolution options like with Virtual Console games?

This is unreal. I’m looking forward to a new wave of modern ports for N64 games I missed.

I realize I’m biased having experienced this era at my most influential (as another user easily defined it as ages 12 - 22), but this was definitely it for me. I only had a Gameboy before I finally had a PS2. The big mascot character games of this console were formative for me. Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper. Kingdom Hearts and Shadow of the Colossus were everything to me. Tons of other huge titles made this generation.

But it’s the weird little games that I think about fondly. Katamari became a franchise, but it was just a funny novel idea when it dropped on the PS2. Kya: Dark Lineage, an adventure/fighting game absolutely packed with fun ideas from a studio that just made racing games prior. Magic Pengel - basically DIY Pokemon - was pretty much everything I wanted in a game. Even Eye Toy, which completely sucked and barely worked, offered a new way to play games.

Things were just different then. I think it was maybe the last time we thought of games by their budgets. Most titles were what we would maybe call AA these days, something that almost doesn’t exist anymore. Where indie games didn’t exist yet, but small studios were prolific. For me, any game that let you run around as a fairly detailed 3D character in a cool setting was magic to me in a way the flat, pixelated worlds on my GBC never were. The worlds in my PS2 were believable.

Dang, Valve stealth indoctrinated console gamers to Steam with the Orange Box lol.

I have questions.

Returned to my beloved 3DS to play a fan translation of the Japan-only Rocket Slime 3. The translation itself is solid, though there are a bunch of text rendering issues. Nothing that ruins the experience. I loved the previous game and this one is a very similar experience, but I think I preferred the mecha fights of 2 over the pirate ship battles of 3.

The gameplay balance is all over the place, unfortunately. Regular adventuring off-ship is dead easy and a little dull. The boss fights in particular are incredibly uninspired. But the ship battles wildly fluctuate in difficulty. Some I manage to Perfect without much challenge, others have me hanging on by a thread and landing me on the Game Over screen more than once.

I’m on the last chapter of the main quest and will probably give up soon on trying to complete everything as I’ve read the final post-game gauntlet is absolute hell.