When Black Friday Comes...

Well, it's here... National Step All Over Your Fellow Man for Low Priced Merchandise Day. I wish there was a discount on thought-provoking comments, because man, my cupboard is bare right now.

Now that there's an Amiga emulator for the Playstation Vita, I thought I'd review a few of the games for Commodore's cutting-edge (for 1985, at least) multimedia computer. Turns out that running those games is more difficult than I'd expected, full of tedious disc swapping, load times, and compatibility issues. Ruff 'n Tumble, that bizarre yet brilliant hybrid of Metal Slug and Sonic the Hedgehog, runs a lot smoother than it had on the PSP, and is double the fun with an infinite ammo cheat and a dedicated button for jumping. However, the Amiga version of Snow Bros. won't work at all, and the ill-conceived ports of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II won't actually let you play them because they demand discs you've already put in the Amiga's virtual drive. So I guess that's not really an option until I work out the kinks.

I recently picked up a flight stick from St. Vincent RuPaul's (wait, that's not right...), so reviews of arcade games that use that style of controller are not out of the question. The only problem is that what a flight stick offers in immersive, seat of the pants excitement, it lacks in precision. It feels right to play Zaxxon with a trigger-mounted stick, but an ordinary gamepad makes it less likely that you'll crash into castle walls, enemy jets, and all the other hazards the game throws at you. Then again, even a really good gamepad can't fix Zaxxon's frustrating lack of depth perception. Sorry, but that altitude meter on the side of the screen just doesn't cut it in 2016. (or 2006. Or 1996. Heck, maybe even in 1982 when the game was released.)

Plan C would be to barf up a bunch of drawings I did on Miiverse over the last couple of months. I haven't been posting there as often as I did last year, but there should be enough fresh content to justify a post. It's kind of lazy, but hey, it's something.