AmethystViper

Back in 2019 thanks to my older brother's help, I was able to put together my own SNES Mini emulation box with a Raspberry Pi 3B+ after seeing LGR's DIY PlayStation Mini and parts recommended by ETA Prime. I *could* have gone for a Genesis Mini set-up with RetroFlag's Mega Pi case, but I went with the Super Pi case instead since I never had a Super Nintendo growing up and also for practicality with the aesthetically-matching controllers I wanted to use with it. I do need to upgrade my system's SD card since I'm running out of room for games. Some of my favorite emulators that I've been using across various systems includes Genesis Plus GX (via RetroArch), DuckStation, Snes9x, PCSX2, RMG, Tsugaru, neko project-II, melonDS, mGBA, Beetle PCE (also via RetroArch), and flycast. I hope that one day that Mednafen can get *.CHD support for certain games like PS1, Saturn, and PC-Engine CD games.

Happy New Year, everyone!

Is it possible for one for the help/credits screen for SIGIL II?

Yeah, this has to be the fast speedrun to Doom's addon curation I've seen yet.

I don't think it is in actively development anymore since the last patch was like months ago, unfortunately and many issues I and other users on these forums and Steam pointed out haven't been addressed.

I'm not sure if this counts as a confessional, but I never got into (much less heard of) Doom growing up as an impressionable kid up until hearing about the Columbine massacre and it wasn't until I played Doom 3 when my twin brother borrowed the Xbox version that I got to experience those games since I didn't have a computer of my own at the time.

I have been curious about playing Deadily Preminition, the story and the way the characters behave I heard are great, but the problem is either finding an Xbox 360 copy at a reasonable price or should I put up with the PC version's horrendous porting issues.

I don't have a screenshot but I have found this (at the 0:24 mark):

Yeah I think that sounds like PCSX, which is ancient. The "current" version of that is PCSX-ReARMed although it was dropped since DuckStation is basically that but better, however, I just discovered there is apparently PCSX-Redux, which aims to bring back PCSX-ReARMed and bring it up to more modern standards.

Which emulators have you tried? I think DuckStation or PCSX Re-ARMed should be able to run better on your laptop.

I've used those mods before, although I don't think there's a mod that adds manual lock-ons, the (optional) gameplay changes that Hardcore Mode has, and the Turbo Mode mod also sadly speeds up other places of the game like the cutscenes. I still need to get the Vergil Downfall DLC too.

I'm going to list of a few games that I like that a lot of people have some very adverse reactions to me liking them. Mighty No. 9 TL;DR version: To me it is game that wears classic Mega Man's spirit on its sleeve while doing of its own things like mixing in elements from Mega Man X that makes it a nice mirage of those two series. Despite the rough presentation, level design, and localization, I thought it was an inoffensive Mega Man-inspired game that is far from an "unredeemable failure" that the internet wants to make this game out to be. Underneath the unpolished and underdeveloped exterior, there's a game with a nuanced, fast-paced take on the classic Mega Man formula with nice art direction, a catchy soundtrack, and humbling themes of familial bonds and overcoming self-doubt that you don't see often in video games. DmC: Devil May Cry Since @Spooner5020 described what I was going to say, I will say that as a long-time Devil May Cry fan, I was expecting this to be awful going from the trailer although I was kind of out of the loop because I just ignored everything after the initial trailer of the game. I saw the game going on a deal on Humble Bundle for dirt cheap in a bundle of games, and out of morbid curiosity I played it on Steam... and I was pleasantly surprised. The one big issue I have with the game with the game I have is the color alignment system, which to me stifled the combo potential since certain enemies are restricted to either Angel or Devil weapons, but even before using the mod to fix that issue I had a lot of fun with the free-flowing combat despite the lack of manual lock-ons. The story was pretty dumb, but I was able to enjoy it in a "so bad, it's good" kind of why and I don't think that this interpretation of Dante is nearly the callous douche as he's made out to be. Kat though is pretty meaningless in the story. It's a damn shame that we don't have Definitive Edition on PC; I have it on Xbox One (although my older brother is the one who owns the console) and it fixes a lot of the issues I have with the game while adding new stuff to make it more engaging. Like seriously Capcom, why can't PC players enjoy this version already. Bullet Witch This was something that I was curious about since it was a game that I seen on the Xbox marketplace that featured a beautiful witch who uses guns and magic to fight monsters, but slept on it for a long time since there were other games I wanted to get on my Xbox 360 at time. I eventually picked up the game on PC thanks to XSEED making an official port of Bullet Witch, and despite the jankiness of the game, this was a kinda neat and arcade-y third-person shooter with some awesome spells to use. The biggest complain I heard was the gigantic levels being a slog, which I can agree with, the levels are too big for their own good, but thanks to XSEED Games restoring an unused dash function in the game, it makes the levels much more tolerable. Another issue people had was how Atari, in their infinite wisdom, decided to nerf the guns just to make players use magic more, while making the extra missions that were free in the Japanese version as paid DLCs for the Western versions. Once again XSEED Games saves the day and rebalances the game to be in-line to the Japanese version and making each guns viable to certain situations and all the extra missions are unlockable and built into the game, and these missions offer some unique challenges that mixes up the game with new rules and objectives or lets you run less with destructive magical powers. One hit kills from the snipers (although that can be easily countered by summoning a wall in their line of sight) or a thrown object by the Wallnut Heads is pretty bullshit though. This isn't a bad game in my opinion though definitely ambitious without the development talent to back it up coming from Cavia, the same company behind NieR and the PS2 Ghost in the Shell game, yet so many critics and Bayonetta fanboys are quick to bash this game into the ground, the latter of which go out of the way to call Bullet Witch a "Bayonetta rip-off" when Bayonetta wasn't even a thing in 2006. And for those who are put off by the game's English dub, there's an undub mod that someone graciously made it a better experience if you ask me.

This is mine. I can share the source of the artist of this one if anyone's curious.

And just like that, the Switch port of BallisticNG gets shitcanned thanks to the Unity fiasco.

That's the thing that I was fearing from all this because there are some up and coming indie games or ports thereof that haven't been finished yet that still use Unity (e.g. Hollow Knight; Silksong, the upcoming Switch port of BallisticNG), stuff that already has been using Unity, or in the case of Vampire Survivors, made the jump from having used an entirely different engine to Unity only to pretty much rework everything again to get away from Unity is going to hurt developers. An animator I follow on YouTube is reluctantly sticking to using Unity since he started his indie game project about 6 years ago on it and he even made tutorials online to help other independent developers get their start with using Unity is looking back at his tutorials to regret spending his time on an engine he's going to abandon ship because of some PoS from EA wanted to destroy developer's livelihoods.

Rockstar, Groove Street Games, and Take-Two did the same with how they handled the GTA Trilogy Remaster; they claim they were committed to fix all the problems with it after the negative word of mouth it got, but ultimately they hardly bother to fix the majority of the bugs and errors they introduced with these games, much less fix the hideous character models, all because these shitty remasters sold millions of copies...

This might be a would be redundant considering with have Doom 3: BFG Edition and the Unity port, but I would be curious if someone made a source port based on DOOM: Classic Complete on the PlayStation 3, complete with the controller vibration features, automatic patching of Map 31 of TNT's Pharaoh level, and online multiplayer capabilities.

As much as I like the Unity port, it's a shame that it never got the same kind of love or quality-of-life updates that the Quake remasters got among other issues I and others reported on Steam.

Would this story that I have count? What happened was I was cleaning around my shelf and moving some things around, and as I was moving the box that my Patchouli Knowledge figurine was packaged in, and as I was taking it off the shelf for that moment, I found a DEAD WASP that out of nowhere was just sitting on top of it. I almost thought it was still alive and might try to sting me (maybe it was revenge for me having killed nine of these bastards invading the kitchen of my house back to back last Summer with just a can of Raid and la chancla in each hand).

Corporate greed is killing so many great games built on Unity...

I don't think I really have experienced much in the way of consoles that are considered failures that I have, but out of what I currently own I have a soft spot for the Wii U. I always liked the "Off-TV" feature that lets you play games right from the Wii U gamepad (despite that you're still limited to the range of the console and the battery life on it is miserable), and its backwards compatibility with original Wii games gave me another option to enjoy my library of Wii, Wii Ware, and Virtual Console games that helped with the Wii U's lack of standout first-party titles (though I found it really dumb that games in Wii Mode can't be played with the Wii U Gamepad or its Wii U Pro Controller). There are retro games that were re-released on it that made use of the Wii U Virtual Console emulation by M2 that provided controller remapping features with a save state feature that made certain games even more convenient to play, not to mention it also made good use of the Wii U's "dual screen" capabilities to bring back DS games on it that lets you play games on both the TV for the top screen while the touchscreen on the gamepad can be used for the bottom screen. I'm looking forward to soft-modding mine at some point so I can do more with my console and get much more mileage out of it.

You might want to look into setting up VirtualMIDISynth and download the SC-55 soundfont so you can get better sounding music with Doom95 instead of using the stock MIDI Wave Synth that ships with Windows.

With the upcoming PC release of the Ray'z Arcade Chronology coming to Steam this Fall, I guess it's only fitting to discuss these disasters... Layer Section (a.k.a. RayForce) - Windows 95: This is a very subpar port of a Taito classic shoot 'em up and time has not been kind to this one. One of the biggest problems of this PC port is the game's screen being crunched down to fit in a messily square window to fit within a screen real estate of 640x480 and unlike the Sega Saturn version there's no TATE (vertical) display mode either. Other problems include the game is missing visual effects from both arcade and Saturn versions, on certain setups the game speed can be ludicrously fast (although that can be fixed with DLL files supplied on the game disc), the music can sometimes play out of order (which I can attest to personal experience since I have the game myself), and if you didn't have the game disc, then have fun with no music playing whatsoever since this port reads off Redbook audio. I've been trying to find a portable solution to this problem with newer open source WinMM wrappers but this PC port's way of handling music streaming from the disc refuses to cooperate with them. Layer Section II (a.k.a. RayStorm) - Saturn: An admirable, but tragic conversion of RayForce's 3D follow-up. While this version has some novelties over the much better PlayStation and PC ports, such as new CGI cutscenes in between stages and a playable R-GRAY 0 outside of the 13-Ship mode, but the pros are greatly outweighed by the cons. This version not only suffer from notable visual downgrades (e.g. worse looking textures, alpha transparencies are replaced with the mesh effect) to work on the Sega Saturn's limited 3D capabilities, but even with these cutbacks the game struggles to maintain a stable frame-rate and it causes some serious input lag problems, which is something you absolutely DO NOT WANT in a shoot 'em up game [cough]City Connection[cough]. Sound also didn't come out unscathed as the sound effects are tinny and muffled compared to the arcade and prior home ports. Still somewhat playable, but it's not hard to imagine why the PlayStation and arcade versions has been ported on newer systems unlike the Saturn version.

Stuff I'm actively playing through at the moment: Dragon's Crown Pro (PS4) Gotta Protectors: Cart of Darkness (Switch) CrossCode (PC) The Legend of Dragoon (PS1 via RetroArch) Phantom Breaker: Omnia (Switch) DOOM Enhanced (PC)

A tween me never grew up with a computer like many others did but I once played this classic my brother borrowed at the dead of night on the original Xbox and was thoroughly freaked out during the Hell levels, and without this release of the game, I wouldn't have gotten into classic Doom. Happy 19th Birthday, Doom 3, glad to have you as part of my video game experiences. I hope someday we can get a faithful remaster of Doom 3 that adds new features and quality-of-life features like the recent ports of the classic Doom trilogy and Quake games has. (This is a secondhand copy I got off eBay to play on my Xbox 360; shame it doesn't work on Xbox One/Series) Redux and the Gold Edition mods are something I want to try out once I finish playing through the original game with Enhanced Edition + Essential HD Pack.