FM Chiptune Musician | DX Complex Staff | SEGA, MSX and Retro Tech Dork | He/Him
Formerly _NetNomad@kbin.run
Microblogging at _NetNomad@oldbytes.space
https://netnomad.dxcomplex.com
this might not be too far off, i know flarum is planning to include activitypub in their 2.0 release and nodebb already has it working in test
AND WHEN THE NIGHT IS OVER, LIKE A BAT OUT OF HELL, I’LL BE GAWN, GAWN, GAWN…
i am a diehard for old school SEGA sprite-scaling racers. OutRun, OutRunners, Super Hang-On, GP Rider, and Power Drift are all must-plays. they all run great in MAME and have also had a number of high-quality console ports. later polygonal titles like SEGA Rally and Hang-On GP are also great but will be less impactful if you’re already used to modern racing games
i see a few comments mentioning different F-Zero games and would like to throw F-Zero 99’s hat into the ring. the sheer chaos of that game is really something you have to experience for yourself
i was honestly bummed when Hyrule Historia came out and codified the timeline, because half of the fun of the series for me was trying to imagine where all these games that didn’t quite fit together fit together. that, and the third branch essentially being a what-if and relegating the original games to it felt like a dismissive cop-out. i appreciate how BotW was full of enough contradictory evidence to not be placed in any one timeline and then TotK doubled down by contradicting the original Imprisoning War, and now Nintendo has given up on placing them anywhere. we are so back
the article is more about AAA games than consoles, and i agree with the article’s takeaway. graphical improvements have been an Emperor’s New Clothes situation for about a decade for me now. the reason we have those hundred hour AAA games is because with today’s technology, the only advantage big studios have over indies is sheer volume of content. people are starting to wise up to that more and more and those studios will have to find a different way to justify those massive budgets and price tags or simply go under
as for consoles, though? i think the average PC gamer underestimates the value of things Just Working to the vast majority of customers. PCs themselves are having a tough time against smartphones and chromebooks and computer literacy is decreasing from gen z to gen alpha as a result. the seeming failure of the newer xbox and playstation has more to do with the aforementioned dying AAA market and the fact that they’ve become dumbed-down gaming PCs themselves instead of Just Working. the Switch successor will probably not be great but still sell gangbusters because Nintendo is monopolizing the market on Just Works, even if just barely!