Respect is a weird word. It seems to have 2 nearly opposite meanings (kind of like literally):
So the first one implies that respect must be earned. The second implies that everyone must be respected by default (their due regard), thus respect is unearned.
Well the other thing is that design work doesn’t scale the way art does. You can’t throw 1000 game designers at a project and expect them to create a coherent game design.
So you end up with one or a small team of game designers and they need to get the major parts of the design done early since everyone else follows from that. This leaves you with so little room for experimentation that you end up with a cookie cutter game design.
Oh okay. That sounds a lot better than I thought!
I think to me the crank seems ideal for a fishing game. Has anyone made one of those?
It’s a tough sell then. I did a search in the article for the word crank and got a lot of matches but it was too long for me to read. I would have preferred some short video clips to demonstrate exactly how it works.
Ahhh that’s annoying. The crank looks like it makes the whole unit much more awkward to hold, especially for larger hands. The fact that it’s just a control gimmick which doesn’t really add anything to classic Game Boy games makes it a hard pass for me.
Evolution is not our friend. Evolution favours reproductive fitness, not happiness. Happiness is just one of many tools in the toolbox for getting us to reproduce.
The current situation with low birth rates due to the availability of contraceptives is a temporary blip. Right now you can witness a wide range of forces arrayed against that status quo. Note that for humans, evolution operates not only at the genetic level but also at the cultural level since parents can pass their culture on to their children.
We’re witnessing a major backlash and reaction against secular liberalism, a return to authoritarianism and a revival of religious membership. Religion has always been one of the most powerful of evolution’s cultural weapons for increasing reproductive fitness.
You won’t get that from AAA studios: that’s largely indie territory today.
The issue with creating novel and interesting gameplay is that it’s not a straight-line process. It takes a lot of experimentation and failure. That doesn’t match with the large teams and assembly-line process of AAA game development.
An indie game developer, especially one who just works on the game in their free time but otherwise has a day job, is 100% free to experiment and redo their game design hundreds of times. Often this doesn’t mean throwing the game away but instead making lots of small games for game jams or just to build a portfolio of projects.
Couple that with the fact there aren’t nearly as many AAA studios as there are indie game developers working on hobby projects and you can see why AAAs are at such a disadvantage when it comes to experimenting with novel and innovative game designs. Indie game don’t need to all be successful to make it hard on AAAs: out of thousands of indie games only one needs to be successful.
I guess not many people remember that Microsoft was convicted of antitrust violations against Netscape (which effectively destroyed that command).
Yeah I don’t hate Valve fans at all. I have a Steam account myself with a decent library that I play on my laptop.
I had no clue whatsoever about the hacked 3DS ecosystem until my friend basically dragged me into it by buying the consoles (refurbished actually)! Once I started learning about the scene I really got impressed with what the small homebrew community accomplished. In addition to emulators and some homebrew games, there are also a number of utilities in the scene. You can run an FTP server on the hacked N3DS and just bulk copy over files via wifi rather than having to pull the microSD card and sneakernet it to your PC. There’s also a program called universal updater which is a package manager of sorts that makes it easy to download and install emulators and other apps quite easily.
Of course none of this is as smooth and convenient of an experience as installing Steam games would be on a Steam deck, though I’m sure if you’re into emulators you’ll have to use other tools to get those installed anyway.
My friend and I are currently playing through some classic NES RPGs which we’d previously overlooked. The N3DS has pretty good battery life, lasting about 10-12 hours on a full charge; far more battery life than I have time to spend gaming in a day anyway (due to my job). The standby time is good but not great, knocking off maybe about 10% battery per day while sleeping. Lastly, a big plus for me is that replacement batteries are available through iFixit. I bought 2 of them and the install process is very easy (just a couple of screws and you’re in).
My hope is that iFixit will continue to make replacement batteries available long term. That could potentially allow my N3DS to last decades into the future, barring premature capacitor failure or some unfortunate accident.
I think the N3DS really shines as a dedicated older emulator (NES/SNES/SEGA/GBC/GBA) machine and it may be very hard to beat if you’re like me and prefer those older games. For newer games, especially PC games of the last decades or PS2/GameCube/Wii/Switch emulators, the N3DS is just not an option. I am looking forward to playing the Majora’s Mask remaster (written specifically for the 3DS) however!
The one I have is called the “New Nintendo 3DS XL” and it has a much faster CPU (804MHz Arm 11) compared to the original 3DS (268MHz Arm 11). While the CPU difference doesn’t matter for running DS or 3DS games (apart from a handful of games written specially for the New 3DS) it makes a big difference running the more intensive emulators (such as the PS1).
When I got mine it had the very last version of the 3DS operating system installed (Nintendo still maintains the update servers even though the eshop is shut down). Yet the instructions for the hack were easy enough to follow and I had no trouble getting up and running.
The Steam deck is an attractive option too though. The main reason I got into the 3DS is because my friend bought 2 of them and gave one to me so we could both do the hack and play lots of games and discuss them. I think the main reason to really prefer a 3DS comes down to form factor: if you really like the folding case, the stylus, and the dual screen setup (which really shines for many games in the massive DS/3DS library) then you’re not gonna get an optimal experience with the single-screen Steam Deck. I think in particular the stylus really matters for puzzle games which demand higher tap precision than you can comfortably achieve with a fingertip.
It’s hard for me to imagine anyone buying brand new AAA games these days. Between the huge back catalogues of previous gen consoles as well as the PC and the insane prices for new AAA games which don’t innovate very much anymore, I can’t see much reason spend that kind of money.
I have a hacked New Nintendo 3DS and it can basically run every console emulator up to and including PS1 as well as natively run GBA, DS, and 3DS games. The library for the thing is enormous and with a 128GB microSD card you can store a ton of stuff on it.
Oh and it can also run DOSBox and SCUMMVM games though I haven’t tried them so I can’t vouch for the play experience. I should think the stylus would make a decent mouse replacement but I’m not sure how well it works in practice. Arcade-style DOS games that use the keyboard only (Duke Nukem, Crystal Caves, Commander Keen) should work great though!
Yes. The ubercollectors pay that much. Below them is another, larger tier of collectors who pay hundreds for these old games.
People pay thousands of dollars for shrink-wrapped copies of games I rented for $5 as a child. Alcohol use is down. Drug use is down. Pregnancy is down. All this other nonsense is way up.
Then it’s no longer vegan.
This isn’t butter, this is one type of butter fat. It’s missing the milk solids, proteins, and other molecules that contribute to butter’s smell and taste.
Don’t forget to paint over those cracked weld joints!
Hmmm? You put the life saver over your head and around your torso and then the people on the boat pull you out of the water. It’s pretty much his only chance: get out of the water before a shark attacks.
It’s not smaller but it is faster.
AI makes it pretty trivial to vomit out large amounts of code. 250,000 lines is nothing. The code quality is garbage, of course, and will be hell to maintain in the coming years. It will likely just be rewritten again if the company is still around.
If there’s one thing high school students have a ton of it’s free time. When I was that age I put thousands of hours into video games and got nothing to show for it. I applaud this kid for turning his high school hobby into a paycheque.
Nintendo’s always been litigious and controlling of their brand. What they haven’t been (until recently) is price-gouging peddlers of derivative schlock resting on their laurels. They used to be afraid of low-quality games and rehashes diluting their brand (they witnessed the carnage of 1983). Now they just don’t care.