Messages

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Modern Video Games / Re: Nintendo announces physical games will cost more

« on: May 02, 2026, 06:43:52 pm »

Gaming is quickly becoming a hobby for the affluent.

It always was.
Consoles were the cheap option for those who couldn't afford a computer(and by that i mean a C4, MSX, Amiga, Atari ST and not just a IBM) and i think all people in high currency countries would do good to look at cheap countries.
Why do you think the Master System was a massive seller in Brazil for decades?
Why do you think in most african countries the people would deem a PS3 today as a gift from the gods?
I went to Sri Lanka, my grandparents bought a house there, they invited us over, the neighbours had never seen a game boy before it was like magic to those kids (that was in decenber 1999)
Or for the western world: Origin. Whenever they dropped a new game, you basically needed a new PC. Wing Commander 2 wouldn't run on the same PC on which you played Wing Commander 1 on - and you better got a sound card and 100 bucks for that Voice Speech pack that only gives speech to the intro and a few voice commands in game!

If anything, considering that games back then were made by 10 people and now they are made by a 1000 it's insane that prices remained that stable
(Console gamers meanwhile should question why they need to pay a monthly fee for online gaming, while PC gamers don't)

Gaming was always a privilege - and a expensive one (and one where you'd dump a ton of money on blunders like the Power Glove or the Activator)

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: May 02, 2026, 06:24:18 pm »

I wanted to use the mods for Retro Rewind, but the only one at the time that seemed the most notable had no work put into making the real movie art work with the space on the cases, so it would look really bad or the New Release standees looked super terrible, which made things so awful to look at.  I'm likely to replay it once they add all their roadmap stuff planned like video game rentals, and then see if there's an improved movie mod for the game by then.

Yeah, the original two mods were bad, one just went Blockbuster (never was a thing here in germany, so it looks weird to me) and the other was super strange in it mix of genres and movies. There is a Mod that allows your own VHS covers and that opened the floodgates. The Authentic Early 90's one is great, has most of the classics (lacks Chuck Norris, i mentioned that on Nexus) and a ton of really deep dive cult movies and european stuff like Asterix and the Bud Spencer & Terence Hill films. It really adds so much to the game just having the VHS covers and the Posters in your store
I can't wait for the game update.

Rewind99 is kinda doing the same at the moment, albeit in a more Schedule 1 way where you "mix" movies to make new ones and fight a corporate business while everything is just bizarre, i think that one could be a blast with friends though

Current new obsession: Far Far West.
Take the best things from Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2 and mix it with Robots in the Wild West. I enjoy this game so much with my friends (and made friends of playing with strangers, sometimes all you need to do is play the harmonica in game to hit it off, it's so much fun) and it also has a good amount of comedy, quirky moments, strange moment, like the quests that lead to a quiz and all that. the game is just fantastic already.

3

General / Re: Do you still prefer physical games or digital?

« on: April 29, 2026, 06:34:35 pm »

I still use DVD/BD/4KBD/CD/R2R and yes also Cartridges
I do use emulators, i use steam but i do prefer physical media, i do prefer real manuals and i like boxes. I do like holding something in my hands.

I recently got into comic books (batman, superman, that stuff, never was into it as a kid for some reason, took me a long time to really get a taste for it i guess) and i could've gotten everything on kindle for a fraction of what i paid, but when i hold that fucking 3 kilogram monstrosity that is "Batman Adventures Omnibus" in my arms like it's a baby, yeah, i know why i prefer that medium. Also nobody can alter it or kill it (like Amazon did with 1984 on kindle, Ubisoft did with The Crew or music services only having remixes or remasters on service instead of the original music or  Rockstar did with the current versions of the old GTA games)
With movies the advantage is even bigger since the bitrate on most streaming sites is disgusting and not any better than high quality DVD (Amazon Prime has movies with 2 Gigabytes, 1080 and everytime the pictures goes black you can count the pixels like it's a Atari 2600 game)

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General / Re: April 2026 - Recently added to collection/recently purchased

« on: April 29, 2026, 06:20:51 pm »

SOCOM II US Navy Seals
Ratchet & Clank 2: Locked and Loaded
And with those, i reached 130 PS2 Games

Best thing i ever bought: A Retroid Pocket 6. I have a lot of downtime on my job and on commute, this thing is just awesome to pass time.

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General / Re: What are you playing?

« on: April 29, 2026, 06:17:14 pm »

Retro Rewind which got better with the real mods for movies. Just fun managing a vhs rental game store in the 90s
Far Far West. Just started it today, love it. Robots, Wild West. A mixture of Helldivers and Deep Rock Galactic. Had fun with my friends.
Under Par Golf Architect - it has a few problems but finally a worthy successor to Sid Meier's SimGolf!
Mad Television Tycoon - from the MadTower/Mad Games Tycoon guy, a great successor to the ancient MadTV
Contractville - A ton of fun in multiplayer. Redecorate, smash, rebuild houses in a open world, shenanigans included.


Also Bully Anniversary Edition on my Retroid Pocket, got the game for free thanks to my GTA+ subscription and it's just as much fun as it was 20 years ago on the PS2

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General / Re: When will your backlog actually be completed?

« on: April 29, 2026, 06:13:30 pm »

Never. I'd probably need 10 lifetimes and the will to suffer through a ton of garbage games for that. I don't mind. I feel fine with leaving stuff like Bad Rats unfinished for all eternity

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General / Re: Do you ever buy Non-Original accessories

« on: January 04, 2026, 11:26:01 am »

They have higher fail rates than originals, originals don't really fail while 3rd party ones have allot of reports.

That being said odds are stacked in your favor and in more cases than not they will work perfectly fine and they often have more storage than originals.

So far in 30 years i only had 2 memory cards fail on me, one was a Blaze 2x for the PS1, that had that little switch for the two memory banks, one of them died just 3 months in and the other was in fact a official Sony PS2 memory card that after some time had read and write errors.
The one that amazes me the most is the Gamester N64 Memory Pak with the 2 dip switches and 4 memory banks, altogether squeezed in the same size and nearly the same weight as a official pak. 25 years and running perfectly fine.

Now if we wanna talk about bad Third party products, i got the Mad Catz Dream Wheel... 
Seriously, i think steering wheels are the biggest example of "you get what you pay for", pay cheap and they suck, you have to spend hundreds of euro for a decent one. I got a Thrustmaster TMX Pro for my PC and while that is pretty low tier compared to the serious Sim Wheels from Fanatec (1000+ €) it's light years ahead of all the crappy third party wheels i got for my consoles.

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General / Re: January 2026 - Recently added to collection/recently purchased

« on: January 03, 2026, 10:44:05 am »

Playstation 1: G-Police, Hidden & Dangerous, Thrasher presents Skate & Destroy, NHL Face Off
SNES: WWF Super Wrestlemania, World Cup Striker, FIFA 97, Super Hockey, Rise of the Robots, Unirally
Mega Drive: NBA Live 95, John Madden Football '92, Warlock
PS2: NHL 2004, PES4
Gameboy: NBA All-Star Challenge

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Hardware and Tech / Re: What Was Your Longest Lasting PC Computer

« on: December 31, 2025, 04:31:42 pm »

Oldest in permanent use was probably 5 years with a Phenom II Xsomething with a GTX 280 during the time i barely had interest in new games, lasted me until 2014 when i bought a new PC finally.
threw that out a long time ago.

I still have my old 486 DX4 100 MHz (AMD version) with a ATI Mach 64 GPU (4MB), 16 MB of Ram and a 130 MB HDD and a 1 GB HDD. It was upgraded from a 386, same case, same original HDD, it still contains a lot of my old save games, early attempts at programming in Qbasic (text adventures, simple graphics, nothing fancy) and all that. Of course i rarely used it over the last few...decades, but it still works, even the PSU is the same old one.

If the Ram and GPU Crisis continues, i guess my current PC will have to last for a decade, thankfully i did buy 64 gigs of ram and a 20 gig GPU, so it will work for a while 

(Of course looking back, the numbers are insane. in 1996 i thought the 1 gig HDD would last forever. In 2000 i thought the 20 gig maxtor in our Pentium 3 is overkill, when i had my first 1 TB Drive i thought "where does it stop?" and now i have 8 Terrabytes of NVME and go "I need more!" * same with ram, same with everything)

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Off Topic / Re: What Was The Last Movie/Anime You Watched?

« on: December 31, 2025, 09:38:51 am »

Christmas Season. Thus:
- Die Hard: Classic, don't need to say much
- Christmas Vacation: It's still a lot of fun to watch if you like low brow humour

And otherwise:
The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone - The new cut of Godfather III. It still isn't a very good movie and now it feels a bit incoherent with a lame ending on top.
Sunset Boulevard: No idea if this is really a Film Noir, i wouldn't call that, but my god is that a masterpiece of a movie. Should be mandatory viewing for everybody who has even a small interest in film.

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Classic Video Games / Re: Memory Cards (Management & Labels)

« on: December 31, 2025, 09:21:59 am »

I simply write a number on the memory card's sticker label. Then i have some sheets of paper where i write down what games is on what memory card organized alphabetically and by number. Quick and Easy. Been doing it that way since the 90's.
My Memory Cards to indeed still have the original stickers on them

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Classic Video Games / Re: Do you put your game discs inside a disc wallet?

« on: December 31, 2025, 09:16:41 am »

I try to avoid just buying discs for my cd/dvd/bd based consoles, so all discs are in their original packaging (i know it's kinda weird, that i'm ok with just buying cartridges for 8- and 16-bit systems but don't  buy lose discs for Disc based systems but there's something about a CD alone feeling so...cheap and wrong, i don't know, maybe it's due to CD Burning being easier than Cartridge bootlegging)

For PC i do have wallets since even some games back in the day only utilized those horrendous paper or plastic sleeves, like Wing Commander IV and of course all compilations only used that.

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General / Re: A Year in Review - 2025

« on: December 30, 2025, 04:49:29 pm »

Favorite 2025 Release: Clair Obscure Expedition 33 - amazing game all around

Least Favorite 2025 Release: inZOI - should've been so much more, all hype no substance

Favorite Game Played in 2025: Schedule I with friends was a blast and constant laughs

Least Favorite Game Played in 2025: inZOI or maybe Skate. though i expected a microtransaction cash grab there with little substance, at least it was free

Sleeper Hit of 2025: Tavern Keeper, still early access but already amazing

Favorite Gaming Moment in 2025: Experiencing QD-OLED and HDR for the first time. Ori and the Will of the Wisp and Deep Rock Galactic just blew me away

Proudest Collection Accomplishment of 2025: Finally finished all my long-term collection goals (Getting 1 wrestling game on every system, getting 1 hockey game on every system, getting all my Mega Drive and Master System games from my childhood back, the last missing were Alex Kidd: The Lost Stars and Ecco: Tides of Time)

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General / Re: December 2025 - Recently added to collection/recently purchased

« on: December 30, 2025, 10:37:58 am »

Only took me a couple decades, but i finally got Castle of Illusion (CIB) for the Mega Drive
Also bought Shellshock (Saturn), Super Tennis (SNES), NHL 95 (Mega Drive), NHL 96 (SNES), Slap Shot (Master System), Pirates: The Legend of Black Kat (PS2) and Space Station Sillicon Valley (N64)

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General / Re: Do you ever buy Non-Original accessories

« on: December 30, 2025, 10:35:57 am »

For controllers, obviously. There are a lot of good brands and sometimes, it was basically mandatory. A good example being the Master System. The original controllers are awful in every way. I got a Competition Pro branded Honey Bee and it's just so much better and more comfortable to use. 
Same on the SNES, i got original controllers, but i prefer the Asciiware one (though that actually is officially licensed by Nintendo even)

Back in the day, i bought a whole stack of unbranded Playstation 1 Memory Cards, simply because they were 1/3 in price of what Sony charged and some games could fill up entire cards by itself (sports games especially), so i needed a ton of them. They surprisingly work to this day perfectly fine.
I don't see a problem with that.