Messages

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Off Topic / Re: The best and worst concert you've ever attended?

« on: July 09, 2026, 08:50:13 pm »

I can even do the best and the worst of a single band: Toto
2002: Amazing, nearly 3 hours of their classics, deep cuts, they had Ian Anderson and Al DiMeola as special guests. Total blast
2007: A shell of everything, while they had great musicians like Greg Philinganes and Lee Sklar, Lukather was drunk, Bobby Kimball was drugged out of his mind and in the end they blew the speakers out, total disgrace

Otherwise:
The absolute best: Iron Maiden on their Brave New World Tour, nothing gets close to that, the band wanted to proof so hard that they're back and they were back with Dickinson and Smith
Worst: Mötley Crüe at Sweden Rock Festival 2015. Obvious lip syncing, total chaos,  sounded like the worst shit imaginable. There was a cover band in the smaller rock tent doing mötley crüe songs a day before and they were awesome and bette than the real thing

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

« on: July 08, 2026, 04:41:59 pm »

PS2: Grandia 2
Game Boy: Batman: The Animated Series
PS1: Akuji the Heartless, Driver 2 (99 Games...i still have to think what #100 will be)

Steam: Gothic Remake, Final Fantasy 1-6 Pixel Remakes, Sonic Frontiers

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Off Topic / Re: Music thread

« on: June 23, 2026, 12:21:28 pm »

I'm always fascinated how people can post a Top 10 or Top 20 lists of anything they love so easily. Me? I couldn't name a Top 20 of music. I couldn't name my most favourite artist...i mean, maybe Iron Maiden? Black Sabbath? Creedence Clearwater Revival? Pink Floyd? Bathory? Deep Purple? Just not possible, way too many great bands and i don't even utilize streaming that much, i collect physical media. Currently i await the arrival of 7 CDs, three of them from Summoning (Melodic Black Metal/Dungeon Synth from Austria, great band)

I'm close to 1000 physical albums (i got a lot of those album classics/original album series and other box sets that collect a lot or even all albums, like an omnibus comic) and samplers by now, including all the garbage i bought when i was a kid (Sonic the Hedgehog, Rednex, Dr. Alban,the cringy chart stuff  ) and that's not a look when i look around the musik-sammler website and see all the people with 5.000 to 12.000 albums

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General / Re: The Mighty Polymega

« on: June 05, 2026, 12:41:03 pm »

And I don't pirate

It's not really piracy, considering the original developers don't lose out, but they also don't receive any money from their games being sold anywhere today - instead, all the money goes to the current rights holders, usually a big publisher like EA, Microsoft, Embracer, THQ Nordic or anybody else who sucked up all sorts of licences for old games and now makes a quick, easy buck and considering how awful these companies are, they don't really deserve money, imo. If these games would make money for the original developers, i would support it, a lot of them never became rich and were always underpaid for their creative work (especially in the 80's). For every millionaire John Romero there are 50 developers who never made a living from their passion, no matter how creative they were.

This thing is also hideously overpriced. For half the money you get a Retroid Pocket that can emulate everything in 1080 up to the WiiU (except Xbox because that's still a mess). It's the best thing i ever bought in regards to gaming, makes my commute to work so much more fun

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

« on: June 05, 2026, 11:20:47 am »

- Final Fantasy VIII
3 more games to reach 100 on the PS1. Makes me wonder what i should get. most of the obvious ones i'd like to have (Resident Evil, Nightmare Creatures) are not just expensive but censored to pieces in the german versions - buying from the UK is expensive as hell and most other countries usually got a localization to a language i don't understand (i made that mistake with COD Black Ops 1, turns out, the french version is french only all around  )

Also since the music thread is a dead body. I also got Mad Villainy By MF Doom and Licensed to I'll by the beastie boys on vinyl format.

Why not resurrect it? I bought around 50 CD's since April 

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Modern Video Games / Re: Third expansion for The Witcher 3 in 2027

« on: June 05, 2026, 10:25:08 am »

2016's Grim Dawn is to receive its latest Fangs of Asterkarn DLC sometime in 2026 (ten years).
2006's Titan Quest received its Eternal Embers DLC in 2021 (fifteen years).
2008's Castle Crashers received its Painter Boss Paradise DLC in 2025 (seventeen years).
1998's Age of Empires II received its Rise of the Rajas DLC in 2016 (eighteen years).

The big difference is that the named games are all Multiplayer games with big (or relatively big) communities. Multiplayer games always stay alive for a long time or get revived to generate money (Payday 2 was resurrected and now receives free and paid updates again)
Witcher 3 on the other hand is single player, which usually have relatively fast dying fanbases unless the modding community is extremely strong, like Skyrim or Stardew Valley.

This is definitely done to not just generate some easy money after they had to delay Witcher 4 some more and to keep the franchise afloat and create some buzz. Not really all that surprising.

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General / Re: 4 New Games Added to the "World Video Game Hall of Fame"

« on: June 02, 2026, 11:04:34 am »

Angry Birds ? Seriously ?

Why is that a surprise? As a Franchise it made nearly 10 billion dollars, more than Fast & Furious, Superman (that is surprising), Sesame Street, Sonic the Hedgehog, Halo, Shrek and other media franchises. The movie made over 350 million dollars and the impact is everywhere. How many games reference the Angry Birds style of game? Like Jetty Boots in Deep Rock Galactic for example. I never played it myself, but i saw it a lot and understand the references in other games.
But again, there are earlier games and franchises that deserved an induction.

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Modern Video Games / Re: Valve Raises Price of Steam Deck OLED by $300

« on: June 02, 2026, 10:18:52 am »

It's pretty funny how things go, for decades hardware/ electronics has only gotten cheaper as the years went by, nowadays even the older stuff gets more expensive

Unsurprising when Data Centers gobble up Ram and SSD's left right and center and even the manufacturers start to rather sell to these factories for a premium, than to the consumer market. Samsum Semiconductor wasn't even selling Ram to Samsung Mobile for their Smartphones anymore and Micron (Crucial) doesn't sell SSD/M.2 for the consumer market.
I bought hardware for my PC in December 2024. The Corsair Vengeance 2x32 GB 6400 DDR 5 Ram cost me 224,90€. Now, the same set, at the same shop sells for 1029€!

AI is to be blamed for this madness. Valve just realizes the same everybody else does. The Retroid Pocket 6 was going to feature 12 gigs of ram but due to the crisis, it was reduced to 8 gigs (same as the RP5) and they can't even get enough Ram to satisfy the market (3-4 months waiting currently)

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

« on: May 29, 2026, 09:53:56 pm »

How is it?  I always assumed Tokyo or Japan in general would be such an excellent setting for the game series. I gotta wait for it to come to PS5 like a good boy

More of the same, basically. NPCs and your own character are downright ugly, which led to a lot of memes so far. The dialogues in the cutscenes are cringe as always. The Music is atrocious - if you set a game in japan, bring in some japanese music, considering their diverse musical scene but no, we get the same rap mumble garbage (like Lil Nas X) and synth slop as usual. Only one station (Gacha City Radio) has japanese music and it's the worst of their pop music. No visual kai, metal or anything...I pretty much instantly turned off all sounds except the car engine.
The AI in races is all over the place. Wheelspins are nerfed aand that was promoted as a good thing somehow. The progression is still not there, you instantly get supercars. I think Gran Turismo always did that better with buying a cheap, used car and work your way up from the bottom.
And it still has a lot of the same old graphical flaws like the pixelated red smoke on checkpoints

On the positive: the game is optimized and runs on old hardware. My PC can ran it maxed out without any problems (AMD GPU, despite that, Raytracing works perfectly)
The world is definitely a huge, massive improvement over Mexico. Way more interesting and diverse with its biomes and cities.
The car list is big, some interesting new cars, but also a lot of annoying omissions (i miss the A-Team Van)

Overall i'm glad i got it relatively cheap from a key store, it's definitely not worth the full price.

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

« on: May 26, 2026, 10:31:36 am »

Some more games i bought:
PS1:
- Crash Bandicoot 2
- B-Movie (Invasion from Beyond in the USA, i would actually prefer that title, B-Movie sounds lame, while the other sounds like a sci-fi/horror film title from the 1950's)
- Eagle One Harrier Attack (only bought it to have a case for Silent Bomber, since that game with all inserts, manual, disc - but no original case)
- Silent Bomber
- Final Fantasy IX

PS2:
- Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
- Final Fantasy X, original release with the Bonus DVD
- Final Fantasy X-2

PS4:
- Star Wars Battlefront (only bought it to have a clean case for WWE 2K19 since that game came in a absolutely disgusting case i threw out, whole game with case was 2 bucks)

My first Final Fantasy games. I only played FF1 and FF7 on emulators, hated both (FF7 massively so, i know that goes against everybodies others opinion) but i'm willing to give that franchise another chance and those copies (complete!) were shockingly cheap. Maybe 9 and 10 make me understand what people see in that franchise...

Crash Bandicoot is also something i'm stunned myself. I got my PS1 in 1997, the PS2 in 2002 and yet, i never got around to buy those two (I got CB1, CB3, the Trilogy remake and CB: It's about Time though) 

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Classic Video Games / Re: SNK and Plaion are re-releasing the NeoGeo AES Console.

« on: May 12, 2026, 11:16:08 am »

Would've instantly bought one but sadly, SNK is owned by Misk, which is saudi arabian and controlled by that inbred, xenophobic, homophobic muslim shit stain crown prince. I'm noot giving my money to that kind of piece of subhuman garbage.
And that sucks, because i would really like to own this, but i got my principles.

12

Modern Video Games / Re: Gamestop Offers 56 Billion Dollars To Buy Ebay. Good or Bad?

« on: May 09, 2026, 06:23:24 pm »

I'm mostly just amazed that Gamestop has that money. Are they that big in the USA? Here in Germany they attempted to take over but never were able to compete with online shops like okaysoft and the local shops people prefered. It reminded me of the monumental failure of Walmart trying to taking over and losing billions. Gamestop pretty much ceased to exist here last year.
If Ebay gets eaten by them, i don't worry. Here in Germany, kleinanzeigen, which was once part of ebay, is now a separate entity and better anyway.

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

« on: May 09, 2026, 06:11:19 pm »

Playstation: Colony Wars, Colony Wars Vengeance, Rayman, Wild 9, ECW Hardcore Revolution
Dreamcast: Sega Worldwide Soccer 2000 (finally got a football game on every platform)
Master System: Air Rescue
Playstation 4: WWE 2K19 Deluxe Edition (so i got my "one wrestling game at least on every platform intact, i already own it on steam but it was cheap enough)
Game Boy/GB Color: Duck Tales, Supreme Snowboarding, International Track & Field Summer Games

Digital:
Steam: Windrose, Global Rescue, Pinball FX Williams Pinball Vol 10, Zaccaria Pinball EM+ Pack 5 & Circus Deluxe Table
Windows: Forza Horizon 6 Deluxe Edition (not paying 120€ for the Deluxe edition on Steam when i can get a Xbox key for 75€  )

Edit:
Added some more stuff on PS1:
- Cool Boarders 2
- Syphon Filter 2
- Grandia
- World's Scariest Police Chases
- Top Gun: Fire at Will
- Victory Boxing Champion Edition
- All Star Action (The 'Action 52' of PS1 i guess, it's only the 2 CDs for 2,95€, wouldn't be willing to pay more for this but i can't wait to experience that garbage  )

And for PS2 Super Bust-A-Move

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General / Re: 4 New Games Added to the "World Video Game Hall of Fame"

« on: May 09, 2026, 05:54:50 pm »

Bejeweled over Castlevania?  Isn't Bejewled Extremely Derivative? Why not Bubble Bobble.

While it wouldn't be the first puzzle game i'd think off, certainly not before Columns, Klax, Puzzle Bobble, it is a big franchise (50 million sold by 2010, obviously a lot more now) and it started the whole Match 3 Fad. There were and are thousands of copycats jumping up everywhere from straight up clones on google play to more interesting titles. It definitely belongs in a hall of fame but not before the other puzzle games that existed. Not before Klax or Colums that did all that connect stuff long before.

Personally, I'd consider these sorts of experts far more capable of making selections in this sort of process based on history and cultural influence than the kinds of industry figures you're suggesting. In the end, there is an exhaustive list of games that could be nominated or inducted. This is just one organization's selections.

I would say it depends on who these "experts" are. There are video game "scholars" in the way there are archaeologists or historians or scientists. In the end it might be some ex-ign morons or some random youtubers (god forbid some clueless people like the AVGN or Pat the NES Punk)

The problem is that the foundations are ignored. Rogue gets nominated once, when it should be in there from the start (especially considering today where tons of games are "roguelite" or "roguelike") and Starcraft first and Warcraft never even mentioned? Without the success of Warcraft 1 & 2, Starcraft would not even be a thing and Warcraft spawned World of Warcraft.
And tons of games never mentioned that should. I would put Wing Commander in there, given the fact that it pushed technological boundaries, is popular enough to spawn mods, was in the Guinness Book of World Records (WC3 and then 4 as most expensive video games until Shenmue) and where the reason why the whole "space opera" genre even exists (Colony Wars, Freespace, Freelancer, Starlancer and so on)
Same with Half-Life (shouldn't that be first ballot? influenced, the mods (counter-strike!), the culture about it, it made Valve and led to Steam and for over 20 years people ask where Half-Life 3 is)
Again, i just look at it, i don't claim to be an expert, but i definitely shake my head at those weird choices and nominations.

And then there's the induction of Barbie Fashion Designer...what exactly did that influence or how did that have any longevity?

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General / Re: 4 New Games Added to the "World Video Game Hall of Fame"

« on: May 09, 2026, 09:05:07 am »

So why madden at all?

Because it's an american thing i guess.
I looked over the list and it's highly questionable and makes me wonder if only young millennials and gen-z are involved. Skyrim and Angry Birds? That's what you induct before Maze War? Before Wolfenstein 3D? Before Maniac Mansion? Before Monkey Island? Before M.U.L.E.? Before Alone in the Dark (without that, Resident Evil wouldn't be a thing even...) and most of all: Where the hell is Pitfall?
This is as bad of a joke as every other "Hall of Fame" (like the Rock n' Roll one or the WWE)