missingno

It was a great game that I enjoyed start to end, but ending on a “this will only make sense when the 3rd game releases in X years!” note leaves a really sour taste in my mouth.

Well, one problem with ZTD is that it completely ignored the teaser in VLR’s epilogue. Actively contradicted it even.

I don’t think the teaser made VLR feel incomplete though, since it was also completely disconnected from VLR’s otherwise self-contained story.

Ryujinx was released as open source under the MIT license. They can’t retroactively rescind that license.

They already made Chrono Trigger 2, but I won’t blame you for forgetting it.

Sounds like this was more of a bribe than any legal case against the emulator. In which case nothing is stopping anyone from putting a fork back up, and gdkchan gets to laugh all the way to the bank.

While I don’t support pirating products that are currently for sale, I do think it’s essential that emulators like Ryujinx are developed now in order to preserve titles for later. Some Switch software already has been delisted, and someday eventually all of it will be.

So, you’re looking for something like Tales, but not at all like Tales?

The only Tales-like that comes to mind is Summon Night Swordcraft Story, it’s a successor to the classic 2D Tales games, but I’m not actually sure if that’s what you’re looking for.

Given that SE doesn’t seem to want to be at all faithful with their remakes, 8 actually makes the most sense as a game they can and should make big changes to.

Chrono Trigger - Corridors of Time

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - wheeeee

Skullgirls - hehe

Splatoon 3 - I may have hurt some people today

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - nice

Mega Knockdown - also nice

Aren’t they needed to run all the 32-bit games that are on Steam?

Unfortunately you’re not going to find opponents very easily on Steam, as I mentioned. Japan is pretty much entirely on Switch, and the game failed to really take off in the west so you gotta play where the Japanese players are.

My ultimate dream would be to someday get SteamOS running on a DS-sized form factor. Doesn’t need to be beefy, just needs to fit in my pocket and run my favorite 2D indie games.

I bought a Steam Deck just to support the most important thing that ever happened to Linux gaming, but mine has actually just been gathering dust. It’s far too big to really be a handheld, doesn’t fit in my pocket, and does not fill the role that Nintendo’s handhelds served for me. The main thing I do end up using it for is taking Deck + dock to FGC events for a portable setup.

Last year I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus, a little emulator handheld, as an impulse buy because it was on sale super cheap. I ended up putting far more time into it than I ever did with the Deck.

Maybe the best library of all time, my DS collection is massive.

The one thing that’s sad though is how many classics are unlikely to ever see a rerelease. Games that were designed around the hardware just won’t be the same on any other platform.

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.

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.