missingno

FWIW, all three Boktai games do have patches if you can’t play on original hardware.

• Boktai series: These games were so near and dear to my childhood, especially 2. Really though you want the Solar Sensor hardware for the full experience, but I love these games too much not to plug them anyway. Emulating them is worth it over not playing them at all. And for the third game, you’d have to pick between original hardware or the translation patch anyway.
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - It’s Castlevania. Also play Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance, but Aria is by far the best of the GBA installments.
• Golden Sun 1/2: These games were way ahead of their time for how they designed a combat system that encourages you to use all of your tools and not just click basic Attack as if you gotta hoard your MP for a rainy day. Fantastic puzzles too.
• Mother 3: Surely you have already heard of this game and do not need me to tell you to go play it. Have you not played it by now? Why not? Well, okay, if you haven’t played Earthbound first, go do so, then play this.
• Rhythm Tengoku: A wonderful game about pressing the A button. Sometimes you press the d-pad too. Translation patch.
• Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1/2: If you’ve ever played the classic 2D Tales games, these are excellent spiritual successors to those. There’s a third game that’s JP-only, translation patch is being worked on but it’s been stuck in development hell for years…

There are two kinds of right-wing politicians. Grifters who will say and do anything for personal gain, and suckers who have come to believe it. Vance is just a grifter, make no mistake. And maybe at one point Trump built his empire through grift - he was a Republican in 1987, Independence Party in 1999, a Democrat in 2001, Republican again in 2009. But at this point Trump’s narcissism has led him to fall for his own grift, he does believe it.

You can actually tell with Trump that the one issue he doesn’t really care about at all but has to pander to his base with is abortion. And when you see how he flounders when asked about Roe v Wade, that gives you a baseline to compare to all the other shit that comes out of his mouth that he’s dead serious about.

When I point out that it’s bad for Afghanistan to “go broke”

Except that isn’t what OP actually said. Now who’s having a rich disagreement with people in their head?

This thread started with vilifying the Taliban, you responded with “oh you want people to starve?” Obviously, this is not a direct response to what they actually said.

All anyone said was that the Taliban is bad, and you’re very weirdly up in arms about that.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Goofy clip of the week

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike - Friend came to visit from out of town, played some casual 3S for a little while. Also managed to rope him into trying out Waku Waku 7 and Twinkle Star Sprites as I wanted to show off some fun hidden gems in my collection.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Remember when I said I was done grinding this game mode and wouldn’t do another run?

Splatoon 3 - Haven’t touched Salmon Run since the last Big Run and I’m clearly rusty. Put up a 173, which is gold, but I know that gold target isn’t actually much, especially on this map. Still can’t kill a damn Triumvirate, which is what I really wanted.

There are some old English-language resources available on the wiki. But I’ve never quite liked the way we try to teach the game by just showing pictures of an idealized chain built in a frictionless vacuum, it’s a very “draw the rest of the owl” approach. Nor do I know what a better approach looks like for a game this abstract.

At one point I was working on a video where I’d build a chain step-by-step and overexplain my thought process on each piece. But that sits on a large mountain of unfinished projects and ideas. I’m retired from the game now because, well, I can’t continue justifying my competitive energy towards a game that just has no future as long as its publisher hates it, so it’s never going to get finished.

If you want functional online, the Switch version of Puyo Puyo Champions is the only title worth bothering with. Specifically Switch, other platforms are ghost towns.

If you want singleplayer content, 15th Anniversary, 20th Anniversary, and Chronicle are all peak. None of these games were released outside of Japan and they’re older titles you’ll have to emulate, hence all my salt about the state of things today, but at least they do have fantranslation patches.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2

I wrote that essay back in 2021, and three years later time proved all of it correct. This game straight up killed the series.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - I WON A FIVE MAN BRACKET WOOOOO Also played some Skullgirls casuals for a little while after the bracket ended.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Ever since Balatro blew up, people have been joking about when we’re gonna see the mahjong roguelike next. Then four different ones went into development. Then Mahjong Soul surprised dropped a fifth one as a limited time event, and it might be the most promising of all of them. Then I broke the hell out of it.

Splatoon 3 - Team practice. Don’t have any cool clips to share rn, maybe next week.

Don’t. There’s no reason to care about the anniversary of someone creating an account on a website. “Cake day” as a concept was one the most insufferable reddit-isms, and will remain so no matter what else you call it.

• Boktai series: Hideo Kojima’s most unusual work, and I mean that in the best way. These games were so near and dear to my childhood, especially 2. Really though you want the Solar Sensor hardware for the full experience, but I love these games too much not to plug them anyway. Emulating them is worth it over not playing them at all. And for the third game, you’d have to pick between original hardware or the translation patch anyway.
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: It’s Castlevania. It’s good. Also check out Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance, but AoS was by far the best of the GBA entries.
• Golden Sun 1/2: These games were way ahead of their time for how they designed a combat system that encourages you to use all of your tools and not just click basic Attack as if you gotta hoard your MP for a rainy day. Fantastic puzzles too.
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: If you’ve played any of the other Mario RPGs, this one’s great too. Has a 3DS remake but I haven’t played that version so I can’t tell you how it compares.
• Metroid: Zero Mission: The original Metroid has aged rather poorly if you ask me, but this remake does a perfect job modernizing it into one of the best games in the series. Fusion is good too, but some fans have opinions on that one.
• Mother 3: Surely you have already heard of this game and do not need me to tell you to go play it. Have you not played it by now? Why not? Well, okay, if you haven’t played Earthbound first, go do so, then play this.
• Rhythm Tengoku: A wonderful game about pressing the A button. Sometimes you press the d-pad too. Translation patch.
• Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1/2: If you’ve ever played the classic 2D Tales games, these are excellent spiritual successors to those. There’s a third game that’s JP-only, translation patch is being worked on but it’s been stuck in development hell for years…
• The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: Zelda.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Made top 8 at locals. Then played a long casual set with the guy who eliminated me from bracket, came out of it feeling like I understand the Carmine matchup better now.

Kitsune Tails - Got to act 2 and I’m just replaying the same levels with a character who has a bunch of strong movement abilities. New levels designed for this character would’ve been great, but why am I replaying the same ones but now way easier?

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers - My opinions on this game keep going back and forth. I’ve found the strats to win more consistently by just relying on disrupting the opponent’s deck, but doing so feels a little too linear. I saw there’s a big balance update in beta now, so I guess I’ll have to see how the changes feel.

Splatoon 3 - lol, lmao

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Came up with a new strategy at club this week where I just draw good tiles over and over.

Favorite:

• 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.

Mega Knockdown - Took 4th in the 2nd Anniversary bracket, and streamed top 4 on my own channel.

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.

CrossCode is my favorite RPG of all time, and that’s a high bar. Super excited for anything else Radical Fish Games does.

If you haven’t, I beg you all to please go play CrossCode.

Has there been any word on a Linux port? Since it’s in Love2D I saw people were able to unofficially inject it into the native runtime, so it would be great to have that made official.

Same as last week.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - I’m back on my bullshit again. Uzuki arc was fun, but when it comes time for bracket I gotta lock in. And by lock in, I mean still play like a clown.

Splatoon 3 - Didn’t have too much time to practice this week, but had one good session. Really trying to work on more actionable callouts, coordinating with our specials and planning a push together rather than merely announcing things after they happen.

Persona 4 Golden - Still just post-Kanji dungeon. At the rate I am going I will finish this game… someday.

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story - Man, forgot how annoying it was that you have to always go for weapon breaks against bosses or else you miss their blueprint forever. Also, RHDN shutdown has me wondering, if/when the third game’s translation patch ever gets finished, where do I even look to find out about it?

Slay the Spire - I can quit any time I want, I swear.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Came dangerously close to losing my Master 1 rank on Soul, but got a few wins so I’m safeish now. I know I’m too reckless and I’m trying to work on that. I did play one of the best games I’ve had at club this week, had the discipline to fold several tempting hands and it turned out to be correct every time. Sometimes protecting second place through smart play is more satisfying than lucking into first.

Turn-based: Bravely Default. A stellar evolution of FF5 that gives you so many toys to play with, and the titular Brave/Default mechanic opens up a lot of cool ideas just by giving you flexibility in when to take your turn. Specifically BD1 and Second though, I felt like BD2 was a massive step back by trying to introduce a turn order system at the expense of no longer queueing everyone together at once.

Action: Tales. Hard to pick just one, and there are still a bunch I haven’t played, but I think I’ll go with Vesperia specifically for all the advanced tech it allowed for.

Honorable mention to CrossCode as well, but I know someone’s gonna debate whether it counts as J or if it’s just sparkling Secret of Mana.

Learned that the people I thought were my friends… weren’t. Set off an awful chain of events that cost me my dreams.

I feel like don’t know how to make friends anymore, and I don’t know how to trust people.

Gamecube:

• F-Zero GX: It’s been over 20 years since the GOAT dropped and all we’ve had to show for it is that damn 99 game. Go play this and weep that we’ll never see another like it.
• Kirby Air Ride As a racing game, it’s okay. But City Trial mode is one of the best damn party games ever made. Check out the hack pack for extended goodies.
• Nintendo Puzzle Collection: The best version of Panel de Pon, but SNES is a close second if you wanna play on a device that can’t run Dolphin. GBC is also kinda noteworthy for having a unique singleplayer to work around platform limitations - opponents have a lifebar rather than a board. Just don’t bother with 64.
• Tales of Symphonia: This game got a PS2 rerelease with some extra content, and the HD remasters are based on that version. But the catch is that they were downgraded to 30fps, and yes that includes the so-called remaster. So I still recommend playing the Gamecube original at 60.

Wii:

• Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary: The absolute pinnacle of the series (by which I mean it’s all downhill from here, I will never forgive Sega for what came next ), crammed with a whopping 20 game modes. I really love the challenges where you have to chain under bizarre restrictions. I prefer the Wii version for its 480p assets, and it’s the easiest to emulate, but if you care about story mode the translation patch only exists for DS.

GBC:

• Game & Watch Gallery 2: Holds a special place in my heart as the first game I ever owned. Has the best lineup out of all the collections, with 3 and 4 you can kinda tell they had used up all the heavy hitters.
• Mario Tennis: An incredible tennis RPG. And Mario doesn’t even show up until the postgame as a bonus boss, which I find hilarious. Has connectivity with the N64 version if you can get that running, lets you transfer your RPG mode character and unlock more content on both titles.

GBA:

• Boktai series: These games were so near and dear to my childhood, especially 2. Really though you want the Solar Sensor hardware for the full experience, but I love these games too much not to plug them anyway. Emulating them is worth it over not playing them at all. And for the third game, you’d have to pick between original hardware or the translation patch anyway.
• Golden Sun 1/2: These games were way ahead of their time for how they designed a combat system that encourages you to use all of your tools and not just click basic Attack as if you gotta hoard your MP for a rainy day. Fantastic puzzles too.
• Mother 3: Surely you have already heard of this game and do not need me to tell you to go play it. Have you not played it by now? Why not? Well, okay, if you haven’t played Earthbound first, go do so, then play this.
• Rhythm Tengoku: A wonderful game about pressing the A button. Sometimes you press the d-pad too. Translation patch.
• Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1/2: If you’ve ever played the classic 2D Tales games, these are excellent spiritual successors to those. There’s a third game that’s JP-only, translation patch is being worked on but it’s been stuck in development hell for years…

Romhacks:

• Celeste Mario’s Zap & Dash (NES): SMB1 turned into a Metroidvania with Celeste mechanics ported in. I think what impresses me the most is that they got 4-directional scrolling into this engine.
• Super Metroid and A Link to the Past Crossover Randomizer (SNES): It’s an absolutely incredible technical feat that this even works. SM and ALttP smashed together into a single ROM, with a few doors that take you from one game to the other, then the item pools are shuffled together so you have to go back and forth to find one game’s items in the other. Unfortunately because ALttP is a much bigger game with a lot more items it kinda overshadows SM, you may not find this to be as replayable as the standalone randos. But I recommend trying it once because it’s just so cool the first time.