Random Gaming Thoughts

[Gucci]

Sorry Note. Not this year. Too much crap going on.

In any event, Retro Game Repair Shop finally got more Game Boy Micro batteries in.

I got one a few months back, maybe last year can’t remember. It’s a battery from someone named Mahko. 750mAh capacity. It worked out great since the Everdrive uses more energy to run so the original battery wasn’t cutting it anymore given the age and size.

In this case, I got three more. I also picked up a couple of SP shells and two SP batteries. 950mAh from FunnyPlaying and Mahko.

Just trying to keep these things alive and fresh!

[pierrot]

Earlier in the weak I finished up my Christmas shopping, and grabbed a few bobbles for myself--'member when Black Friday didn't start a week before Black Friday? Pepperidge Farm 'members--like the MAMBA scart cable to simplify the TORO setup I have.

Mostly, I was just chuffed to finally pull the trigger on the entire BitWave collection of Toaplan games from GOG. Was $35 for all 16 titles. I don't tend to spend that much on games anymore, but it is technically an average of slightly over $2 a game. I also threw in Botanicula at a couple bucks, and their 'preservation' update of the PC version of Breath of Fire IV for $5. BoFIV is a game I kind of hated when I played through it in high school, but it was pretty cheap, goes toward a noble cause, and has a separate exe for the JP-PC version that I promptly installed on my steam deck (even though I have the JP-PS1 release on my shelf).

I've also been a little excited about a pre-order I made a couple months back for the Octopus arcade stick. Supposedly, it's meant to be shipped this year, but it kind of feels like that might slip. At any rate, I'm looking forward to trying it out with the now formidable list of shooters I've gathered between Steam and GOG.

[Note]

That's awesome you pre-ordered that Octopus arcade stick, pierrot. I saw a video review of it a while back and was pretty impressed with how many platforms it was compatible with. I'm always hesitant to pre-order or back projects but I'll be curious about your experience with it when you get it, as one stick for most platforms would be a nice solution.

[pierrot]

I'm pretty excited to see it in person. Even if it were just compatible with PC, it would fill most of my wishes for it, but I will be trying it out on everything I can. The built in VMUs for Dreamcast also sounds pretty fantastic. The Playstation compatibility excites me too, since using that controller for arcade games makes me soooo angry.

[REPO Man]

I know that Marvel's Spider-Man 2 is based directly on the comics, but I keep thinking that there's WAY too many similarities between the third act and the second act of the musical Be More Chill.

In both, a seemingly benign third-party sentience that requires a human host turns out to be trying to spread its influence to others. In the case of BMC, it's a hyper-advanced AI built into a supercomputer the size of a pill that's activated with Mountain Dew.

For those who don't know, in the musical version of Be More Chill, aside from the fact that the SQUIP takes the form of Keanu Reeves in lieu of just existing as a disembodied voice in Jeremy Heere's head, the musical also deviates from the original Ned Vizini novel by having the SQUIP take on the task of giving all the other students at Jeremy's school a SQUIP that he can connect to.

And just like Venom's symbiote offspring in the third act of Spider-Man 2, the SQUIP openly tells Jeremy his plans to get everyone under his influence in a misguided attempt to make Jeremy popular and get with his crush, the quirky theater kid Christine Canigula (sic?).

And in both, the main character has to team up with his friend (Jeremy's equally geeky friend Michael Mell and Peter Parker's protoge/fellow Spider-Man Miles Morales, respectively) to take down the evil entity before it takes control of the entire human race. Granted, the SQUIP merely mentions how it would go that far to "improve [Jeremy's] life", but this wording totally mirrors Venom's claims towards "healing the world".

In the end, it's the destruction of the source of their powers (the symbiote meteorite and The SQUIP tablet, respectively).

I know I'm making a laughable amount of leaps in logic but between powering through the latest in Insomniac's excellent Spider-Man games while listening to the cast recording of Be More Chill, I was bound to pick up on similarities. Even if it is in the same vein as my high school report where I speculated the idea that Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer novel inspired Japanese manga in a way to justify reading and rereading my steadily growing collection of Shonen Jump issues.

And if you've never heard of Be More Chill, I put the cast recording in the spoiler tag below.

[RCBH928]

I keep seeing cool emulators that look like this with awesome themes, all consoles built in, and a half circle dial to pick games from to the side. Can someone guide me on how to set up something similar? i am thinking its retroarch with some sort of front end

rere.jpg (177.17 KiB) Viewed 2163 times

[REPO Man]

That looks more like a front-end like Emulation Station, which has a Desktop Edition for PCs and Android. It might also be Hyperspin. Such front-ends have a myriad of themes that not just change the vibe and aesthetic, but also in some cases the function. Some themes have dedicated sections for collections based on franchises or hacks. Some themes have variations that focus entirely on artwork (like box art or screenshots), while some offer details like release date, genre, number of players and in some a description of the game.

[RCBH928]

That looks more like a front-end like Emulation Station, which has a Desktop Edition for PCs and Android. It might also be Hyperspin. Such front-ends have a myriad of themes that not just change the vibe and aesthetic, but also in some cases the function. Some themes have dedicated sections for collections based on franchises or hacks. Some themes have variations that focus entirely on artwork (like box art or screenshots), while some offer details like release date, genre, number of players and in some a description of the game.

Thanks for this. I looked up setting Emulation Station and looks easy enough. It says Hyperspin is actually the more good looking one but more complicated to setup. any idea which one is more popular? I kind of like to stick with the herd.

[REPO Man]

I use ES-DE on my Retroid Pocket 5, but mostly since I'm familiar enough with Emulation Station due to it being a major part of various Linux-based distros like Rocknix and RetroPie.

I honestly never used anything else.

[Note]

I didn't realize Grandia has some compatibility issues with the PS2 before starting up the game. The game froze on me a few times in random places, but luckily I didn't lose too much progress. I went back and found a few older threads on the Game FAQs forums with users discussing the game not running well on fat model PS2s. First time I've run into something like this.

It's been hit or miss though, as I've had a few play sessions where I didn't run into any issues. Going to try to tough through it and see how it goes. I'm enjoying the game so far, so I'd hate to put in down, now that I'm about seven hours into it.