The only thing keeping me off of Wayland is the fact that OBS window capture forces me to manually reselect every window every time.

✋👉✊👍

HW1 didn’t include anyone from A Link to the Past, Oracle of Ages/Seasons, Four Swords, Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass, or Spirit Tracks. So those would be a good place to start.

Honestly disappointed they’re limiting it to BotW and TotK, again. I really liked HW1 as a celebration of the entire Zelda franchise, and wish a sequel expanded on that to represent an even wider variety of picks throughout the series, especially games that weren’t represented in HW1.

Aika from Skies of Arcadia

As a journalist she did it to see what would happen. And then wrote an article about what happened. This is definitely worth talking about even if she did click the box, the box isn’t really the point here.

Kinda surprised to hear he didn’t already have one.

First game is one of my all time favorites, and I’m blown away by how much more they’ve packed into this sequel.

• Top Ride is back
  • Can now select any character/machine, unlike the original which only had Free/Steer Star (these are now control settings)
  • New exclusive powers
  • Camera zooms in slightly to follow the player, but classic zoomed out view remains an option for local multiplayer
• Road Trip mode
  • A roguelike? Select one of three challenges, obtain powerups, repeat
  • Challenges can involve all three main game modes
  • Dark Matter teased - boss, presumably
  • Shows opening cutscene, this is the game’s story mode
• Online play
  • ArcSys style lobbies
  • All three game modes have separate ranks
  • Ranks associated with colors, again looks like ArcSys style
• All Air Ride courses are returning, plus 9 new ones, for a total of 18 courses.
• City Trial stuff
  • Lots of new items shown
  • Rare boxes can contain more items
  • Sandbag from Smash appears? Drops powerups when hit
  • Legendary Air Ride Machines are back, both Hydra and Dragoon
  • Team Battles - 8v8 mode
    • Legendary Air Ride Machine parts are shared with teammates, making them easier to assemble
    • Stadium events have teams compete for a total score
  • Teases a floating island far in the distance…
  • Free Run, looks to be the same as the first game. Underground parking lot has every machine, but you can also summon any machine anywhere from the pause menu. Flight Warp Star returns, again exclusive to Free Run, can draw a contrail with the special button.
  • City Trial Stadiums can be played standalone, like the first game.
  • Active Stadiums menu lets you toggle which Stadiums can show up, like Smash’s random select
  • VS Boss Stadium - original had Dedede, now there’s Robo Dedede. Transforms between Dedede Form and Car Form. Click R stick to lock camera onto the boss. Teases more bosses - looks like Nightmare and Zero Two?
  • My Music lets you configure frequency of each track, like Smash. Large collection of classic tracks from the whole series.
• More playable characters shown: Taranza, Lololo & Lalala, Daroach, Rocky, Rick, Scarfy, Marx, Waddle Dee
• More new machines
  • Transform Star - Quick Spin swaps between Star form and Bike form
  • Hop Star - Quick Spins do a small jump
  • Bull Tank - Charges forward without worrying about damage
• Two selectable announcers each (one male, one female) for 12 languages. JP VAs are Banjo Ginga and Makiko Omoto.
• Time Attack for both Air Ride and Top Ride, exactly what you’d expect. Standard three lap with enemies, one lap with no enemies. Separate records for every machine.
• Photo Mode accessible from the pause menu in any mode, free camera to play with
• Checklist is back, and reveals an image like in Kid Icarus Uprising. Five tabs: Air Ride, Top Ride, City Trial, Road Trip, and Online. No riders or machines are locked behind online achievements though. Some boxes can be clicked on to go directly to a challenge. Riders and machines can be unlocked multiple different ways, subsequent boxes will instead reward alt colors/decorations.
• My Machines menu lets you customize machines with unlocked skins, accessories, and decals. Machine Market lets you share your designs online. Prices will go up the more popular your design is… but you don’t actually get any coins yourself.
• Hats!
• Miles are the game’s currency for unlocking cosmetics. Decorations, hats, profile card backgrounds, music.
• For every online opponent you place higher than, you earn a Gummy of their machine. Can also be earned ‘gradually’ offline. Used in a little physics minigame where you can just fiddle with your massive pile of trophies. “I hope you aim to become a gummillionaire.”
• Garage - diorama mode you can decorate with your machines
• Composers Shogo Sakai, Noriyuki Iwadare
• Entire menu worth of Accessibility settings
• amiibo - They’re big (shows a size comparison with the original Kirby amiibo), and effectively function as two amiibos, rider and machine. Can swap the rider and machine, and the game will recognize how they’re paired. “But with such elaborate specifications, we probably couldn’t make very many of them…” [Sakurai pulls out five different pairs from under his desk] Kirby & Warp Star, Bandana Dee & Winged Star, Meta Knight & Shadow Star, King Dedede & Tank Star, Chef Kawasaki & Hop Star.
• “Just so you know: we’re not planning any DLC. Everything is here. Also, I’m not planning on making this an ongoing series. I’ve thrown everything I have into this game from the start. So I hope you don’t miss this opportunity.”
• Global Test Ride demo November 8-9 and 15-16.
• Outro teaser shows the Fountain of Dreams and Star Rod, followed by a sleeping Nova opening its eyes.

ZSNES was an important milestone for its time, but once Snes9x came out, it didn’t take long to overtake it in terms of accuracy and compatibility. ZSNES is actually pretty terrible in comparison.

Since it’s only October, it’s already more than once a day.

There actually was a new Madou that came out last year. Heard it wasn’t very good though…

TBH, I don’t think the originals hold up very well either…

13 All Clear

I hate that Discord has taken over most communities and put them in a place unindexed by search engines. I hate it so much.

But this is where users all go in Current Year, and I don’t blame game developers for following the crowd. Especially for smaller multiplayer games, if you want to sustain an active community you’ve gotta have that #matchmaking channel for players to organize.

Also, tbh, Steam Forums ain’t great either. At least they’re searchable, but that’s all that can be said about them. In my experience they’ve often devolved into the most toxic hellholes due to Valve’s lack of moderation. Also not ideal for anything multiplatform, that only covers Steam users.

The other alternative is reddit, but, well, I’m here because I refuse to ever go back to reddit, so, y’know.

It’s Pikmin.

if they are easily available on modern consoles some day.

Pretty much impossible to bring back without the original hardware, unfortunately.

• Kura5: Bonds of the Undying - Boktai is extremely near and dear to my childhood, so much so that when the third game didn’t get localized I convinced my parents to sign me up for Japanese lessons on the weekend (and then didn’t get far in it because I had too much actual schoolwork to keep up with, but I’ve started studying on my own again as an adult now just for fun). I’ve been following this fangame since the first demo came out several years back. Full game finally came out last year… and sat on my backlog for a year. Finally got around to it, and wow, demo was already great but I’m really in love with the finished product. Story is fantastic, does a great job building on the original series’ lore.

• King of Fighters XIII - Dusted this off for some casual sets with a friend. I still have no real combos for anyone but Kula, I’m bad at confirming in games that don’t let me just do LMH -> BnB.

• Balatro - Only three decks left to Gold Stake. I’m telling myself I will not go for the stickers, I shouldn’t do it, I won’t do it.

• Chunithm, Wacca, Maimai - New arcade opened up last month and is threatening to drain my wallet.

• While I was at the arcade at the mall, I also stopped by the Lego store.

Only if Nintendo goes after something that could be defended as parody. But they know to choose their battles carefully, they only threaten legal action when they know they can win, and this won’t change those kinds of cases.

Very few things are ever perfect on the first try. It takes a lot of experimentation to learn what works and what doesn’t.

Well, if you’re specifically looking to play DS/3DS games, original hardware is the best way to do so. There are a few dual screen devices that hit the market recently, but IMO I don’t think it’s worth being an early adopter of any of those just yet.

For every other single screen platform though? Really depends on what you’re looking for in terms of form factor, price, feature set, and what games you want to play. There are so many good options on the market that you’re probably better off looking into them and deciding what looks like the best fit for you. Retro Game Corps is an excellent source for reviews.

Personally, I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus two years ago, and I liked it so much I wish I’d bought a more expensive model with analog sticks. But I also like it just enough that I haven’t been able to justify spending money on an upgrade right now, because whenever I do there’ll still be something better right around the corner…