Just One More Thing...

For my money, this guy is the better eccentric
detective on Comcast's payroll, not that
annoying Monk dude.
(image from Medium)

It seems someone found the early prototype version of Sonic the Hedgehog, with a different set of stages and a ton of bugs that would ultimately be squashed in the final release. (These days, they'd probably just release the game as it is and fix the bugs a year later with patches.) Anyway, here it is if you're interested, courtesy of the Hidden Palace.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled end of year drinking and debauchery, already in progress.

This Crappy Year: 2020 in Review

With a contagious disease costing people both their lives and their livelihoods, and people refusing to believe that said disease even exists, the best part of 2020 is that very little of it currently remains. Fortunately, gaming brought some good news to a year which could desperately use it. Here now are the highlights from the past twelve months.

JANUARY

The toughest game you'll ever love/loathe.

I learned both the pleasure and the pain of Dead Cells, a side-scrolling action title that's equal parts Castlevania, Dark Souls, and that time you foolishly accepted a dare to put your tongue on a frozen metal pole. Preservationists uncovered the rumored Super NES version of Coolly Skunk, which was eventually released for the Playstation with improved graphics and a slightly different title. Sadly, this thoroughly unremarkable mascot, unfit to shine Sonic's sneakers, remains unimpressive even by the humble standards of a 16-bit console, proving that a skunk by a different name still stinks.

FEBRUARY

We've known for years that the Game Boy Advance can play Doom, but some hackers proved that it could play the game better, touching up the graphics while adding features missing from Activision's official release. Speaking of things that are both portable and pointless, Hasbro's Tiger division brought back several of its dedicated handhelds from the early 1990s. They're exactly the same as you remember them despite twenty-five years of technological progress, but that hasn't stopped tinkerers armed with a Raspberry Pi from bridging the gap to the 21st century...

MARCH

Ken Shimura, one half of the comedy duo Kato-Chan and Ken-Chan which inspired our own America's Funniest Videos, was one of the early victims of COVID-19. This had impact on me as a gamer, as JJ and Jeff, the Americanized version of their video game, was one of the first titles I played on the Turbografx-16, and influenced my overall opinion of the console. Seriously, the bulk of the system's library were simple, colorful action titles originally based on some Japanese property. Remember the pack-in Keith Courage? That was really some kid's cartoon called Mashin Eiyuden Wataru, with the characters and storyline given a macho, US-friendly makeover.

Is that Doogie Howser?

I also went to bat for killer apps getting ported to other formats- it used to happen all the time, guys, don't blow a gasket over it- and complained at length about the Commodore Amiga using single button controllers for most of its games. Yes, that was thirty years ago. I'm still frustrated by it, because the Amiga was released in the same year as the NES and had advanced 16-bit features that lent themselves especially well to video games. Considering the direction the video game industry was moving- away from simple arcade challenges and toward complex adventures with a need for more input- Commodore should have known better. Nobody was going to want to play Mortal Kombat with an Atari joystick eight years later.

APRIL

I finally broke down and bought a Switch, a decision I'm still questioning months later. It's not that the system itself is bad; it's just that the Lite variant isn't well suited to many of its games, with a small screen that makes text difficult to read. I'll be complaining about this issue repeatedly in future posts.

My first game for the system was Hyper Sentinel, an offshoot of the Uridium series where you skim over the tops of massive battleships, steadily weakening their defenses with laser blasts. It was definitely not the reason I bought a Switch, but that fifteen cent price tag was impossible to resist.

Speaking of irresistible purchases, the price of the Neo-Geo Mini dropped to thirty dollars on Amazon, so you know I had to buy one of those. I'm sure it was a disappointment for one hundred and thirty dollars, but for a small fraction of the original price, its flaws become a lot easier to ignore.

MAY

Johnny Turbo's Arcade was a focal point for this month, with reviews of a half-dozen Data East games featured in one post. (I got a lot of flack of panning Bad Dudes, by the way, but I'm standing by that review... it wasn't great in 1988, and this paper-thin beat 'em up sucks even more thirty years later.) I also took a second look at the Neo-Geo Mini and picked five of my favorite games from the venerable Pac-Man series. (Venerable: it's more fun to use in a sentence than "old.")

JUNE

Chuck E. Cheese, the famous amusement center and unwitting inspiration for the Five Night's At Freddy's franchise, went bankrupt this month. I used to love this place when I was a kid, but the rat and I went our separate ways a long time ago, so I'm not too broken up over it. They could have had the decency not to buy out the more adult-focused Peter Piper Pizza and drag them down to Chapter 11 hell with them, though...

Take four, they're small.

I also found a cache of rare GameCube games at a bookstore in Sierra Vista, and first learned about the Game Gear Micro, a revival of Sega's handheld from the 1990s with a form factor best described as "Lilliputian." Seriously, this thing be tiny. It's also expensive, costing fifty dollars and containing just four games. It's a slightly better deal than the recently released Game and Watch with only three games, but at least that has a screen you can actually see with the naked eye.

JULY

Not much happened on Kiblitzing this month, with just four posts. One of them was a detailed comparison of all the Sega Genesis ports of Street Fighter II: Championship Edition, including the lackluster prototype by Opera House. ("Opera HOOOOOUSE!") Even if you weren't happy with the version Capcom ultimately released, you'd have to agree it's a good sight better than what Opera House had created for them.

Also, I started building an entertainment system out of a beater PC I bought for five dollars at a garage sale, and warned readers to check the batteries in their handheld systems. Turns out they don't last forever, and neither will your PSP if you leave a bad battery inside it.

AUGUST

The entertainment system I built in the previous month wasn't all that impressive at first, but it got better, thanks to the addition of a video card, an SSD drive, and a high performance CPU. Now it's my favorite way to play old arcade and console games, putting my Raspberry Pi into retirement. I'm sure I'll find some use for it eventually, if I can find it under all that dust...

In less pleasant news, it turns out that SNK has been making stealthy edits to its old Neo-Geo games, removing references to Taiwan to appease the Chinese government. This got me pretty hot under the collar, but it may not be a problem for long now that SNK is under new management...

SEPTEMBER

Okay, we're finally in the "ber" months! September marked the end of the 3DS line of handhelds. I have fond memories of this system, although a lot of that comes down to social features like Streetpass and Miiverse. It was way too much fun busting that stupid pink rabbit's chops in front of a live audience. (And oh yeah, some of the games were fun, too.)

Not having too much trouble keeping THESE
in stock, I see.

Nintendo pulled its usual artificial scarcity BS by limiting the production of Super Mario All-Stars 3D to just six months. Once March 2021 arrives, you won't be able to buy this collection in stores or on the eShop. The Game and Watch referenced earlier in this post was announced this month, but judging from personal experience, it doesn't look like anyone who wants it will have trouble finding one. That's if they want one... even hackers have had trouble finding uses for this machine beyond what Nintendo intended, thanks to limited onboard storage.

OCTOBER

Night in the Woods was everything I expected and just a little bit more, exploring the decay of middle America that the rest of the media seems content to ignore. Sony ended support for its legacy consoles, including the Playstation Vita, which is just one year older than the PS4, and Michael Pachter opened his big dumb yap again, suggesting that Nintendo put an end to the Switch's docking feature. You know, the defining trait of the system that makes the text in Switch games large enough to actually read. Alex Hutchinson also said something stupid, but it's very hard to say something more stupid than Michael Pachter... he's had years of practice.

NOVEMBER

A prototype of the deeply flawed Sega Nomad was revealed by Sega, looking a bit like a high-class Game Gear. By the way, we deserve a portable Sega Genesis that actually works, with games that sound like Genesis games and not funeral dirges. Somebody get on that.

The big news for this month, aside from the bewildering acquisition of SNK by the Saudi government, is that someone found a way to port Atomiswave arcade games to the Sega Dreamcast. Not all of these games are great (Demolish Fist is very not great), but it's nevertheless gratifying to know that the Dreamcast had a little more gas left in the tank, and could have lasted a couple more years if Sega hadn't been so eager to abandon it.

Also, Capcom announced a mini console, as if we didn't have enough of those already. It looks idiotic, like Mega Man's love child with an old IBM PC, but at least it's full of nifty games. At a retail price of $210, it had better be.

DECEMBER

Oh hey, that's right now! The prototype version of Superman for the Playstation was recently released. It's entirely different from the Nintendo 64 version, and consequently less bad. Would I call it good? No, let's not go that far. It sure does exist, though.

Apparently Seph's aim has gotten rusty
after twenty-three years.

Also of note: Sephiroth nearly put a hole in Mario with his impractically long katana, Capcom Arcade Stadium was announced for the Switch, I hacked Super Mario Bros. so Bowser's fireballs weren't ass-backwards, and the NX hoax from a few years ago wasn't nearly as hoaxy as we all thought. Yeah, that was an official Nintendo design according to documents leaked from the company, although it never went any farther than brainstorming sessions. 

Also, 2020 ends in just three days, which is the best news I've heard all year.

Which Switch? What Switch? When Switch?

So hey, remember that image of an early Switch prototype with thumbsticks buried into the screen that got everyone worried about the finished product, but turned out to be a fake? It might not have been as "fake" as we thought, according to Twitter user Forest of Illusion. Here's an image he posted from the latest Nintendo "gigaleak," featuring... a handheld console with thumbsticks buried into the screen.

So it wasn't real, but it was an official concept, and it came much closer to becoming a reality than any of us would have liked. Look, I get enough fingerprints on my Switch Lite as it is... a system with a screen that swallows the front of the unit whole would have been a total grease magnet. What's most alarming is that this design dates back to 2014, suggesting that Nintendo had known the Wii U was a dead man walking and was eager to put it out of its misery just two years after its launch. Special thanks to Game Rant for the scoop.

"What have you been playing on the actual Switch?," you don't say, but I'm saying for you so I have an excuse to pad out this blog post. Fortunately, Nintendo has the answer to this and many other not-so-pressing questions on their year in review web site. Here's what I played the most:

I know, Highrise Heroes: Word Challenge sounds lame, and if you judged it entirely by its plot and a synthy soundtrack plucked from a 1990s drama on Lifetime, I guess it would be. However, it provided many hours of word-hunting, debris-clearing, lab chimp-rescuing entertainment. I'm a sucker for these kinds of games, as evidenced by my previous addictions to Alphabears and Bookworm. Highrise Heroes' only major problem is that it doesn't know when to make a graceful exit... ninety levels is a bit more than anyone really needs, and the bonus challenges were completely unnecessary. Thank goodness they were also completely optional.

Moving down the list, we have Smash Bros. Ultimate and Sydney Hunter and the Curse of the Mayan (Curse of the Mayan what?). I'm sure we're all familiar with Smash Bros. at this point, and this was a pretty good entry in the series, giving with one hand (Terry Bogard is a downloadable character, and that's pretty freaking awesome) and taking with the other (the new story mode feels like busywork, and has got nothin' on Subspace Emissary or Smash Run). 

Sydney Hunter was the big surprise for me, a side-scrolling action-adventure game that plays like a hybrid of retro classics from the past, without borrowing too heavily from any of them. It's a little like Montezuma's Revenge, but with more variety and a goal beyond racking up a high score. It's a bit like indie hit La Mulana, but more fun to play and not nearly as obtuse. It's got some classic Castlevania in there but there's fewer cheap deaths and more freedom in exploring the intricately crafted stages. If you enjoyed any of the previously mentioned games (and don't mind wading through an ill-considered tribute to Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle about halfway through), you ought to buy Sydney Hunter the next time it's on sale.

Next we have Far Cry: Zelda Edition- er, I mean Breath of the Wild, and Steamworld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech. Breath of the Wild didn't click with me... it's a little too vast, too open-ended, and too aimless, and the fragile weapons drove me bananas. I might go back to it if I can get a Zelda Amiibo that will keep me well stocked with swords, but even that's doubtful... I'm sure I could find better uses of my time, particularly with all the Switch games I've purchased but never touched. (Someday, Starlink, someday.)

At the end is Steamworld Quest, a fun if somewhat linear RPG that uses custom-built decks of cards in its combat system. It's hard to fault any part of this game... the attractive, painterly graphics remind me of Vanillaware's best work, the characters are charming, with the eager, lunkheaded soldier Armilly leading her eccentric friends into battle, and the card combat is entertaining, if occasionally frustrating. (One fun trick the game likes to pull on you: incapacitating one of your fighters, then continually dealing cards only he or she can play. Gee, thanks a lump.) Still, I suppose it's telling that I never finished this one, and was never inclined to return to it.

As for how much time I spent playing my Switch, here are the deets:

My use started in April when I bought the system, crested in May, and precipitously dropped by the end of the summer, likely due to my mayfly-like attention span and the Switch losing its new console smell. 

Right now I'm at just four hours for this month, which is slightly concerning. Hopefully things will pick up next year... I'd hate to think that I spent two hundred dollars on something that kept me entertained for four months.

Feel My 'Roth

It's been a while since I've posted, and some pretty monumental things happened in the past week. Let's see what happened at this year's Game Awards!

image from Know Your Meme

Whoa, Sephiroth skewered Mario?

image from Know Your Meme, again

...or maybe he didn't. Anyway, he'll be a downloadable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, so he'll have plenty of chances to improve his aim.

What got me excited is the news that Capcom will release packs of its old arcade games for the Switch. You can see the full list of games at the always trusty Tiny Cartridge web site, but it's probably worth mentioning that many of games in the last two packs will be redundant if you already own the Capcom Beat 'Em Up Bundle and Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection. Also, there's no Darkstalkers or its two sequels, which strikes me as one heck of a missed opportunity. 

Nevertheless, I'm eyeballing the first pack, which contains Forgotten Worlds and Ghouls 'n Ghosts, two favorites on the Sega Genesis that weren't included in the Switch port of Sega Genesis Classics. Plus you get 1943 as a free appetizer, which beats the heck out of the stale pretzels at the local bar.

What else? Apparently the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 was a phone-in on home consoles... if you want the real experience, you'll have to buy it for a properly specced PC. If you bought it for a home console anyway, you'll have to wait to get updates that bring the port up to speed with its PC cousin, or wait to get your money back... or wait for the inevitable "remastered" version on next generation consoles.

It begins, folks... people with Xbox Ones and PS4s are already being left out in the cold, just one month after their successors were released. Why, I remember back in the days of the NES, when Nintendo was still making quality games for the system years after the Super NES was launched! These days, the current generation of systems become doorstops the moment the next generation is on store shelves.

Oh, you think that makes me sound old? Kids get off my lawn, why are there so many battery sizes, Werther's originals. There, NOW I sound old.

While we're on the subject (of next generation consoles, not me being old), does anyone have the straight scoop on backward compatibility for the Xbox Series X and S? At first, it sounded like every game from the past three generations of systems would work on the new machines, then it sounded like only the games that already work with the Xbox One would work on the Xbox Series, and now, I'm looking through Game Pass and noticing that very few of the Xbox One games listed are stamped with X/S. Is there an official list on what works and what doesn't? Because I'm confused over here, and not just because the names of the last gen and next gen systems are so similar.

Flippin' Fireballs!

So, I was digging around Deku Deals, debating with myself on whether Hamster's old-as-dirt arcade games were worth eight dollars a pop (they're not, really, but it didn't stop me from buying Donkey Kong and Moon Patrol earlier...), and came across this image from Vs. Super Mario Bros.

image from Deku Deals

Two things stand out. The first is that they dialed up the saturation levels to HyperDeath™ in the needlessly difficult arcade version of Super Mario Bros. Bowser is suddenly greener than all of Ireland, and the reds are bright enough to permanently burn images of Mario's overalls into your retinas.

The second thing is that, well, the fireball is facing the wrong way. It looks like Mario is firing it at Bowser, but no, Mario's fireballs are tiny rolling balls of flame. That's actually the Koopa King's projectile, and it's headed right for Mario... even though this screen shot suggests otherwise.

I'm sure others had figured this out a long time ago, and even I probably had a suspicion that something was amiss when I first tangled with Bowser back in the 1980s. Someone may even have already fixed it, but with nearly four hundred different hacks for this game listed on ROMhacking, I thought it would be easier for me to make the change myself rather than dig through that massive pile of edits for the right one.

There, that's more like it. No more moonwalking fireballs! I'm not going to share the IPS file for this hack because I'm certain someone else has already done this a long time ago, and because Nintendo has been so remarkably paranoid about its copyrights lately. You're seriously going after some guys for making controller shells in honor of the late YouTube celebrity Etika, hoping to sell them to make money for suicide prevention charities?! Wow, who dropped their pants and dumped a homemade lump of coal in your stocking?

Anyway. All you need to know is that the hack is pretty easy to do... you just load Super Mario Bros. into a tile editor, find three tiles that look like a fireball, flip them horizontally, and swap the positions of the first and third tile. Clamp clamp kabam, the fireball is fixed. Speaking of flipping, if you were wondering how Nintendo managed to animate the fireball with just three tiles, they flipped the sprite vertically on every other frame to give the flame a burning comet tail. You tend to lean on ROM-saving shortcuts like this when your game is only 41K in size.

That's Really Subpar, Superman

Over the last forty-three years of home video games, there have been a multitude of titles based on the adventures of Superman, with several of these being utterly horrible and none being any better than adequate. The recent discovery and release of the Playstation version of Superman, alas, does not break this streak.

Developed by Vectorman creators Blue Sky Software but ultimately shelved by its publisher Titus, Superman for the Playstation was rumored to be the game Nintendo 64 owners should have gotten, with more complex gameplay and missions that go beyond flying through hoops obscured by a Kryptonite fog. While it does deliver on those promises, the Playstation version of Superman is hardly a high point in the system's library, pinned to the ground by slow, tedious gameplay and visuals that don't do justice to the 1996 animated series that inspired it.

Thank goodness for that.
(image from YouTube)

Years ago, a friend of mine described a different game, Cosmic Chasm for the Vectrex, as "process oriented." "Shoot waves of ships, drill through barriers, navigate to the center of the cavern, plant a bomb at the fusion core, escape through the exit, and sign papers in triplicate detailing your mission," he lamented, joking only about the last part. (I've played this game too; signing the papers at the end of a mission would have been the most exciting part. It's no wonder that when it was ported to arcades a year later, they streamlined the controls and trimmed away its excesses.)

"Process oriented" perfectly describes Superman 32. It's so rigidly tied to procedure that it makes Cosmic Chasm look like a non-stop thrill ride. The first stage alone has you unwinding a Gordian knot of tedious tasks as you climb to the fifth story of a parking garage, where Lois Lane awaits. Paths are blocked off by Kryptonite force fields, so you find generators, destroy them all with your ice breath, and proceed to the next floor. Women are held behind burning hot walls, so you use your ice breath to cool down the barriers, punch a hole through them, rescue the hostage trapped inside, but oh! You can't rescue her until you find a health pack, which is behind another Kryptonite force field, which can't be removed until you destroy the generators on that floor. Repeat until the unrelenting boredom threatens to send you into a coma.

I'll save you, uh, Lois?
(image from Stranno)

Eventually, after dozens of hot walls and trapped hostages and health packs and power generators and keys to unlock doors but the doors require five keys and you can only hold one key at a time because Superman's outfit doesn't have pockets and oh lord just shoot me now, you find Lois Lane. She looks more like the Lois Lane from the 1950s Superman television series with George Reeve, but whatever, I'll take any Lois Lane at this point as long as she's not played by Amy Adams. You scoop her up in your mighty Super-arms, and instead of punching a hole through the wall of the parking garage and making a hasty escape, you have to fly down five floors to the exit, while avoiding security droids and roving Kryptonite orbs. 

Of course, a Superman game has to have Kryptonite. It's the only check on his considerable powers, and without them, the game (and frankly, Superman as a character) would be dreadfully predictable and boring. Here, Kryptonite temporarily neuters the man of steel, robbing him of his abilities for several seconds while assaulting your eardrums with a droning dirge that will make you hate the stuff as much as he does. Here's the twist, though... in this game, Kryptonite is even more dangerous to humans. If you happen to be holding Lois while touching any green radiation, including the orbs that move back and forth through tight corridors, the mission instantly ends. Sure, you'll be sent to a continue point, but it takes you back to the third floor, before Lois and before the gauntlet of walls, generators, hostages, health packs, keys, and doors that you didn't want to finish in the first place.

I tapped out at this part, but there's someone on YouTube named Stranno who finished the entire game, no doubt risking his sanity in the process. What I could glean from his playthrough is that Superman 32 takes two hours to beat, doesn't substantially improve after the first stage, doesn't use the proper voices from the cartoon series, and makes Superman's ice breath the only power with any practical use. Also, there are boss fights, but they're very stupid boss fights. Fly up to one of the villains from the cartoon, punch him in the face a couple of times, get hit with a Kryptonite beam while he runs away, repeat.

To be fair, Superman 32 is better than its Nintendo 64 counterpart, and it is important that it was preserved. Evidently the person who found it was hounded so much by hordes of entitled gamers with the gimmies that he deleted it from his hard drive out of spite. He recently had second thoughts and pulled it out of the abyss with recovery software, and he deserves a lot of credit for making that decision... even if the people who demanded it didn't necessarily deserve it. However, as a game, Superman 32 just barely crests over the high watermark of average that has defined Superman games for nearly a half century. Play it if you're bored (and you want to be more bored), but there's more excitement packed into the late 1990s Superman cartoon that spawned it.

Mal Venus

Closing out the month, we have a leak from Sega which reveals that Sega's bitterly disappointing portable Genesis, the Nomad, was codenamed "Venus" (in keeping with the celestial bodies theme for its other consoles of the 1990s) and that it was planned for release in Japan. And here's how that looks, courtesy of Sega City.

Looks like a first model Nintendo DS knocked boots (and bytes) with a Nomad, or maybe a Game Gear. I wonder if Sega made any attempt to deal with the easily dislodged cartridges and low visibility screen of the American version of this system. Maybe these faults are why the Venus never left the prototype stage. My understanding is that Sega took such a bath on this boondoggle of a portable that they probably wished they hadn't released it anywhere.

Nintendo had the good sense to keep its own advanced handheld, codenamed Project Atlantis, in R&D until they could whittle down its size and power consumption. What we eventually got was the successful Game Boy Advance, proving that good things come to those who wait... and the Sega Nomad is the booby prize for those who won't.

By the way, Retro-Bit... you promised us a Nomad that actually works at least a year and a half ago. Where is that...?

Saudi 'Ya Like Me Now?

Well, that was an out of left field sucker punch I wasn't expecting. After years of being under Chinese management, SNK is now at least partially owned by the Misk foundation. Those really were the worst Life Savers, you know.

Finally, the flavor of a ripe underarm in a candy!
(image from Pinterest)

Wait, I'm told that it's the Misk foundation, owned by Saudi prince Mohammad bin Salman. The previously linked Eurogamer article claims that Misk owns a third of SNK so far, and wants to push its share of the company up to 51%, giving it a controlling interest. What will this mean for the beloved manufacturer of the Neo-Geo arcade jukebox? It's anyone's guess, but since China remains a key market for SNK, it probably doesn't mean an end to the removal of Taiwanese teams in the company's sports games.

So there you have it... SNK is now a Middle Eastern game developer. If this upsets you (and considering Saudi Arabia's dismal record on human rights, it very well may), just wait another fifteen years. The way things are going, the company will probably return to Japanese ownership after making brief stops in the Netherlands, Australia, Nigeria, and the Maldives.

Get Equipped with Goofy Micro Console

Remember the folks who ported an Atomiswave game to the Dreamcast? In the weeks since King of Fighters XI made its debut on Sega's last console, MegaVolt85 and yzb has brought a substantial chunk of Atomiswave games to its console cousin... fifteen of the twenty seven available, at last count. The last game ported to to the Dreamcast was the oddball fighter/beat 'em up hybrid Guilty Gear Isuka, which lets up to four players battle on dual tiered arenas that bring to mind the Fatal Fury series, or Treasure's Guardian Heroes. More ports are coming, but with heavy hitters like Fist of the North Star and The Rumble Fish 2 already converted, there's really not much ground left for this dynamic duo of programmers to cover. I for one won't lose much sleep if they skip the hunting games and, uh, Net Select Kaiba Victory Furlong.

Now for the big news of the day. Not satisfied with their absurdly oversized novelty joystick from last year, Capcom is set to release a palm-sized arcade machine packed with Street Fighter and Mega Man titles. Damien "Don't call me Bobby" McFerran of Nintendo Life reports that the machine will be designed by the same team that gave us the Neo-Geo Mini two years before, and will include the two Mega Man arcade games, along with Street Fighter II titles ranging from the game's 1991 debut to the much later spin-off Super Puzzle Fighter II. There are a lot of omissions from the history of both franchises, but I'm sure hackers will quickly fill in those blanks.

image from NintendoLife

What's odd is that the machine kind of resembles Mega Man himself, with a metallic blue sheen and yellow orbs on either side representing the ear cups on Mega Man's helmet. I'm not in love with the design, but at least the joystick and buttons more closely approximate what you'd find on a real arcade machine than what you got on the Neo-Geo Mini. Also, the abstract design reminds me of Tomytronics' Pac-Man, which bears a faint resemblance to the title character.

image from Dave's Stuff on Wordpress

Yeah, you kind of have to squint to see it.

The Retro Station will be sold next month for $210 in Japan. That's too rich for my blood, but considering the steep price cuts we've seen on similar systems, I wouldn't be surprised if that price is drastically cut by the end of next year.

Garfield Was Right About Mondays...

You want the good news or the bad news? I think we've all had our fill of bad news, so I'll start with the good news first. The Dreamcast has been getting a steady diet of Atomiswave ports, courtesy of MegaVolt85 and another hacker who calls himself yzb. Yes, Dolphin Blue is one of those titles, although bugs in the conversion process mean that you can only play through half the game before it loses its marbles. More stable arcade ports include Faster than Speed, Maximum Speed, and King of Fighters NeoWave, the game I warn-told you about in the last post. I'm just sayin', man, I wouldn't have picked it, but if you plan to port all these games to the Dreamcast, even the one where you're slinging sushi to hungry customers, I guess NeoWave would be an unfortunate inevitability. Like death, or taxes, or overpowered SNK bosses, which this game certainly has.

Okay, now on to the bad news. Hey, I warned you it was coming! It seems that ReedPop is pulling the plug on USGamer after seven years of publication, a move which is already drawing uncomfortable parallels to the shuttering of 1UP ten years earlier. I wasn't an avid reader of USGamer, but I respected its "business casual" approach to games journalism, and continue to admire its writers, including Mike Williams, Jeremy Parish, and Nadia Oxford. Here's hoping that 2021 will reverse their ill fortunes... along with everyone else's.

The Atom's Family

It's been a stressful week, as I'm sure you can all attest. We had a rollercoaster of an election, with the sweet taste of victory swiftly followed with the unwanted tang of uncertainty. (Trump said he wouldn't concede, and hasn't, perhaps the first time in his presidency where he actually told the truth.) We lost Sean Connery on Halloween, and Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek just days after that. It's been exhausting, and I for one could use a little news that delights rather than distresses, with a clean finish.

And here it is. A hobbyist programmer named MegaVolt85 has managed to port Atomiswave games to the arcade jukebox's close cousin, the Dreamcast. I don't know how he did this- the increased RAM in the Atomiswave should have made porting its games to an unexpanded Dreamcast massively difficult- but he managed, and here's the proof.

Pardon the liquor and the treats... I told you this was a stressful week. Several King of Fighters games were ported to the Dreamcast officially, but King of Fighters XI was not one of them, landing on the Playstation 2 instead. Fifteen years after its arcade release, King of Fighters XI has found its way to the Dreamcast, and it's pretty much the same as it was on the Atomiswave. There's a faint bit of access time between stages on the GD-EMU where I installed it, and that loading could be more significant if you're playing it from a disc, but past that I noticed no other differences.

KOF XI is on Dreamcast now! Whoopi!

However, there are differences between this and the Playstation 2 port... rather important ones. It's a straight arcade port, and as such I haven't found any way to adjust the difficulty, button layout, or other settings. Most damning is that while the backgrounds are crisp, the characters are not, smoothed over with a bilinear filter that detracts from the otherwise pleasant graphics. The Playstation 2 game let you turn that filter off, but it's an option that doesn't seem available on the Atomiswave, and by extension, here.

Hello? Were you gonna give me the stage now?

Another slight bummer is that the game crashed on me about three stages in, which may either be just a freak occurrence or a serious glitch MegaVolt85 will need to address later. Still, this is a pretty nifty accomplishment, and the programmer intends to tackle more Atomiswave games in the future. A port of Metal Slug 6 is already finished, and perhaps its nautical cousin Dolphin Blue won't be too far behind.

By the way, the Atomiswave is an interesting machine, offering a peek at an alternate future where Sega had supported the Dreamcast just a little while longer. Not all of the games in the system's modestly sized library are fantastic- in fact, many of the games aren't fantastic- but the 2D fighters in particular take full advantage of the resolution of the Dreamcast, making them sharper and more detailed than similar Capcom titles. Seriously, Fist of the North Star may not be Arc System Works' best fighter, but damn does it look gorgeous. 

More Atomiswave games would be welcome on the Dreamcast, and I hope MegaVolt85 will continue to port them. (Feel free to skip this one, though.)

The Uncola

Sorry, I don't have too much to say... too worried about the election. However, there is one thing I did want to mention before October comes to a close. I noticed something odd when I played the Arcade1UP Pac-Man cabinet at the local Wal-Mart. (Remember when Wal-Mart actually had arcade games, rather than trying to sell aging Gen Xers shrunken down facsimiles of them? Pepperidge Farm remembers.) Observe!

These are two of the prizes that appear in the center of the screen in the ill-conceived "upgrade" of Pac-Man called Exciting New! Pac-Man Plus. Yeah, yeah, they just call it Pac-Man Plus now, but I still think of the adjectives on the marquee as part of the title. Anyhoo, one of the prizes, a cocktail, is the same as it's always been, but that can of cola is missing the ribbon that instantly identifies it as Coca-Cola. 

Lots and lots of games from the 1980s featured cans of Coke either as power-ups, or background decor. You'll find it hidden in trash cans in Final Fight, retrieve it from scarlet ninjas in Bad Dudes, and throw goons into signs advertising the pause that refreshes in Ninja Gaiden. (The beat 'em up, I mean, not that Castlevania clone amped up on caffeine.) The Arcade1UP version of Pac-Man Plus is, to the best of my knowledge, the first time I've ever seen the telltale ribbon edited out. And rather poorly too, I might add... they couldn't have added a lightning bolt or a letter or something to it? Without that flourish, it barely looks like a can of soda.

I'm just wondering what happened here. Coca-Cola never balked before about its products making stealth appearances in video games. Why now? Was the edit compulsory or made out of an abundance of caution? Look, I realize that I'm probably the only one who gives a crap, but still, it strikes me as a little strange.

Anyway! Good news on the book front. After an exhausting process of taking hundreds pictures in Batocera and swearing profusely at Fatal Fury Special, I've got the 16-bit ports section of Squirrel Burger Cookout all laid out. I hadn't intended to do things this way, but on the advice of HG101's Kurt Kalata, I've added spreads to each chapter with tons of pictures, comparing all the reviewed games. As they say, show, don't tell... but I'll be doing plenty of both in this book.

Dumb and Dumber

There are some unsavory folks on the fringes of the video game industry that leave a faint taste of bile in your mouth whenever you hear their names. Joe Lieberman. Jack Thompson. Leland Yee. Michael Pachter. Some of these people no longer darken our doorstep, like Lieberman, who left the Senate to join the shuffleboard set, and Thompson, who was disbarred after one too many obnoxious publicity stunts. And Yee, well, we're probably not going to hear him rant too much about "murder simulators" after being arrested for such real-life felonies as gun trafficking and money laundering six years ago.

Michael Pachter, on the other hand, continues to annoy gamers with his reverse Cassandra act, getting undeserved attention for industry predictions that are predictably, well...

Desperate to stay in the public spotlight, Pachter's predictions have gotten increasingly abrasive. He described the former CEO of Nintendo Satoru Iwata as "late and not-so-great" shortly after his passing, and now... there's this.

I'll give you the Cliff Notes. Michael Pachter claims that Switch owners overwhelmingly prefer handheld mode to docked (wrong, as is Pachter tradition... it's split evenly between docked and handheld use, according to Ars Technica) and that if Nintendo were "smart," they'd get rid of the docking feature entirely and just sell the Switch Lite. Ooh, ooh! I know why Nintendo shouldn't do that! Hell, they don't even need to listen to a schlub like me... the fact that Nintendo has already sold 65 million Switch units, and only 9 million of those have been Switch Lites, should be reason enough for them to stay the course and respond to Pachter's remarks the way we all should... with a hearty chuckle and a condescending pat on the head.

The silver medal for the week's dumbest take goes to Alex Hutchinson for claiming that streamers should pay game publishers for any footage they broadcast on Twitch. And where is that money supposed to come from, exactly? All but the most popular streamers are riding the razor's edge of poverty as it is. While you're bleeding the stone, maybe streamers should start paying Hanes and Levi's for the clothes they wear on camera, until they can't afford the licensing fees and switch to a barrel held up by suspenders. 

Look, the streamers already paid for those games. They're giving their publishers free advertising. Maybe you should leave it at that, rather than trying to drill through the bottom of an empty barrel you're already making them wear. I don't know what's more aggravating, the greed of this industry, or the short-sighted stupidity.

Bring on the Night

Recently, I've been playing Night in the Woods on Xbox Game Pass. It's exactly what I was expecting it to be from the descriptions... but it's also a lot more of what I was expecting than I was expecting. If that makes sense.

Mae's not known for her tact. Especially
after she's thrown back a few.

The game presents itself as a side-scrolling platformer, with lead Mae Borowski running through the town of Possum Springs and leaping onto anything that will hold her weight, but past the control scheme, it's a visual novel. The bulk of the game is spent talking to friends, family, and passersby, and anything offered beyond starting conversations is just there to frame the narrative. There's a rhythm mini-game, but it's offered to establish that Mae had a garage band in high school. There's a simple action RPG, but it's just there to forge a bond between Mae and one of her friends. And so forth.

Plot progression is extremely rigid and paths are frequently closed off to the player, making the game feel stifling even in comparison to point and click adventures like the ancient King's Quest series. There is not an abundance of things to do in Night in the Woods; just a lot of conversations to read. If you're not interested in who these characters are and what they have to say, this game has nothing to offer you.

And this really speaks to me. Nobody would
ever drink alcohol if it was just for the taste.

Fortunately, I'm very interested in what this game has to say, and it's not just
because of the impeccable writing. Visual novels have long been the domain of the Japanese, and while their courtroom dramas and outlandish murder mysteries have plenty of fans, I personally have never had much interest in them. The more grounded and relevant narrative of Night in the Woods, on the other hand... now that speaks to me. 

There are severed arms and strange things happening in the shadows and oh yes, all of the characters are cartoon animals, but above all else, Night in the Woods is  a story about disillusioned youth in a once proud Midwestern town, caught in the grip of economic decay. I can relate to this. As a former Michigan resident, I've lived it. I've seen once self-sufficient villages like Sunfield and Mulliken reduced to skeletons by big box stores and online commerce. Banks and grocery stores close, small businesses struggle to survive... these communities have become unsustainable, but people still have to live there, because they don't have the means to live anywhere else. 

Beyond all of her other "charms," Mae
has a bit of a mean streak.

Night in the Woods explores the decline of the Midwest, and the people it affects, in quiet but unflinching detail. You see the lead character return home from college and embrace mediocrity, because it's the only thing she knows. You meet her friends, who work dead end jobs to pay the rent, or manage hardware stores to keep the dying light of their parents' business from flickering out. You accidentally discover that Mae's father, an outwardly friendly man who's always armed with a corny joke, has a secret past as a violent drunk. Night in the Woods is honest without succumbing to melodrama, so things get real in a hurry. Real quirky, real philosophical, real heavy. Real necessary to discuss.

Video games have been around for a long time now, and this hobby has explored nearly every idea and subject imaginable. However, Night in the Woods is the first game I've played that shines a light on the rot that's consumed small towns in America over the last twenty years. The fact that it's the only media of any kind which thinks it's important to discuss is a little upsetting, but if we have to have this conversation with abstractly drawn cats, bears, and crocodiles, so be it.

For Unlawful Carn-al Knowledge

Gee, you spend thirty years selling Wal-Mart cheap crap manufactured with slave labor, and you suddenly think you own the world.

Yeah, it's China again. Hot off the nation's attempt to blot Taiwan out of existence and suppress protests in Hong Kong comes a scheme to absorb Mongolia into its writhing mass. If that wasn't bad enough, China wants other countries to push its propaganda that Mongolia was always part of China, that there was no such thing as Ghengis Khan, and that the wall you can see from space is only there to add panache to the country's backyard.

There's a museum in France that used to have a Ghengis Khan exhibit, but the Chinese Bureau of Cultural Heritage decided that there was no reason a Ghengis Khan exhibit should have Ghengis Khan in it. Why a museum in Europe is any of China's damn business I'll never know, but ultimately the Château des ducs de Bretagne decided that it would be better to close the exhibit than use it as a billboard for China's self-serving historical rewrites.

"What does this have to do with video games?," you say. "I liked this blog better before you got all political!," you say. Well, I say you're lying, because you never liked this blog in the first place. I also say that this has everything to do with video games, because whenever China gets the urge to annex some other country, it tends to trickle down into our hobby, like so much piss from a stopped up urinal. 

Consider this: when Hearthstone champion Blitzchung publicly declared his support for a free Hong Kong, Activision executive and money grubbing turd Bobby Kotick responded by withholding the money he won in a Hearthstone competition, held by Activision. When China wanted to restrict Taiwan's autonomy from the mainland, SNK's current owner 37Games removed all references to the country from several Neo-Geo games. Now China would like you to believe that it was never Ghengis Khan's bitch, and it's going to do whatever is necessary to make you believe that.

Which brings us to this gentleman. 

image from the SNK Wiki

This is Julius Carn from the World Heroes series. He's described on the SNK Wiki as "the strongest fighter of the Mongolian people," and a man who "led the powerful (Mongolian) army into many victories and conquests." Like all of the other characters in the series, he's an expy of a historical figure, and if you haven't already figured out which one, I'll give you a hint: he loves Twinkies for their most excellent sugar rush.

Given China's eagerness to make the world forget about Ghengis Khan, and SNK's eagerness to do China's bidding, it's not hard to imagine what could happen to this character in the immediate future. Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions, but considering what happened to Winnie the Pooh in the Chinese release of Kingdom Hearts (he's not there), it doesn't seem too far-fetched. If J. Carn suddenly vanishes from your digital copy of World Heroes 2, well, you heard it here first.

A Def-Defying Stunt

Pardon my absence. I've been spending a lot of my free time capturing screenshots and laying out pages for the Neo-Geo book, currently titled Squirrel Burger Cookout: A '90s Kid's Guide to Big Neo-Geo Gaming on an Itty Bitty Budget. Unfortunately, the next chapter I'll be working on is... King of the Monsters.

Okay, wrong Neo-Geo game, but it fits. In fact, this was the first Neo-Geo game, so early that it doesn't even have the famous Pro Gear Spec boot screen. I wonder if there are any others like this?

Anyway. I'm just writing to let you know that someone's working on a plug-in for the Playstation Vita which significantly increases the resolution of PSP games. Normally they output on the Vita at their native 480x272 resolution, but GePatch hopes to change this, sharpening their visuals with four times the pixels. You might want to stick with emulation for your high-def PSP gaming fix, though, as GePatch is very early and won't work, or works poorly, with the more demanding titles in the system's library. Thanks to Wololo for the scoop.

History Lessened

It's funny... no matter how much dreadful news there is ("Did you know the governor of Michigan was almost kidnapped by violent rednecks?" "Oh, is it Thursday already?"), and how weary I get from it all, there's always just a little more outrage left in the tank, which gives me the fuel I need to complain about it. 

I took this picture back in 2014. Evidently
it was a preview of coming attractions.

So it goes with the recent announcement that Sony will be pulling all of its legacy systems from the Playstation Store. You won't be able to purchase PS3, PSP, or PS Vita games from your computer, and while you'll still have the option to buy them from the stores built into the systems, this decision will make it less convenient. It's also a symbolic disavowal of these machines. Any move Sony makes to distance itself from its previous generation console and its two handhelds will make it easier for the company to abandon them completely later... and with the PS5 in the wings, they're obviously eager to do just that.

If you were dragging your feet on hacking your PS3 or PS Vita for homebrew, this news should provide adequate motivation to get that done. Sony clearly doesn't care anymore; why should you?

Leather and Lace (and Space-Age Polymers)

Since I re-subscribed to Xbox Game Pass earlier in the month, I figured I might as well get around to trying that Nier Automata game everyone was crowing about a couple of years ago. The quality put into this was obvious, but it feels like there might be too much game (and too many kinds of games) in Nier for its own good. The prologue alone switches from the styles of Radiant Silvergun to Devil May Cry to Robotron: 2084 to StarFox, and while the constant shift from one genre to the next is exhilarating, it's also confusing. Could you give me a little time to learn which of the many buttons on the Xbox controller does what before- okay, I'm surrounded by robots, all taking their anger out on me for their unfortunate resemblance to a park garbage can. Fine, I'll wing it.

Hey, don't get mad at me!
I didn't design you!
(image from Home Depot)

What came to me much more readily is The Messenger, a game from Quebec which does its best to rekindle the long-cold Ninja Gaiden flame. It's better than Ninja Gaiden, as far as I'm concerned... the gameplay is unmistakably similar, but there's less of that being tackled into bottomless pits nonsense, and your empty-headed hero has powers Ryu Hayabusa would have given his left ninja nut to possess. A wingsuit that lets you catch blasts of wind and glide safely down to nearby platforms, rather than leaping for solid ground and hoping you reach it before an eagle reaches you? Yes, please.

Sounds like that gum with the
gooey stuff in the middle.
(image from Steam)

On the Switch side of things (and returning to the subject of robots), there's Mighty Gunvolt Burst, a revisiting of the critically panned Mighty No. 9 with 8-bit graphics and redesigned levels. There are two other things worth noting... the first is that the "burst" in the title happens when you kill enemies at point blank range. This is normally not wise in a game like this, but you get bonus points at the end of the stage if you keep giving robots a colonoscopy with your arm cannon. The other thing is that instead of giving you pre-made weapons, the game scatters parts in each stage, which can be used to put together your own. Want five bullets onscreen instead of three? Want to angle your shots instead of having them follow a straight line? The world is your cyb-oyster, as long as you have the "cost points" to spare.

Cost points can also be used to augment your hero, letting them jump in mid-air, dash away from danger, and most importantly, increasing their defense so they're not crumpled like a piece of paper by the bosses. I absolutely hated this game until I understood how the customization system worked, and found enough parts to make good use of it. It's a lot like Mega Man X in that the game starts out brutally difficult, but eases up on its chokehold after you've found enough power-ups. Actually, that inverse difficulty slope is a lot more pronounced in Mighty Gunvolt Burst, because once you get all the items and the cost points to use them, the action that started out infuriating becomes utterly trivial. 

The only thing stopping you from turning your character into Mecha-Godzilla is your pride (nope, sorry, fresh out) and the bonus points you receive at the end of the stage if you keep him wimpy. You can play the game that way if you want, and it does seem tailored to speedrunners and point-scummers, but nah, I'm quite happy with the handicaps. I just wish I'd gotten them sooner... it would have saved a lot of wear and tear on my throat.

The Eyes Have (Had) It

If you'd like to know what my Switch Lite experience has been like lately, here's a visual aid, courtesy of the fine folks at Frinkiac.

I'm not going to spend much time with my negative first impression of Rock of Ages II: Bigger and Boulder. It's probably the first time in a long time that I've enjoyed the cut scenes in a video game more than the game itself. Like all good nerds, I'm a fan of Monty Python, and the exquisitely drawn, stiffly animated, and thoroughly ridiculous cast of characters satisfies that craving for absurd European humor nicely. But then the game starts, and... uh... what am I even doing here? I get that I'm supposed to break open the gate of the enemy castle with a boulder, but defending my own castle has been an exercise in futility. I've been able to finish the tutorial, and that's pretty much it.

It doesn't help matters that the fonts in the game are so damn small. The tools you use to defend your castle each come with a brief description, explaining how they work and when they should be used, but how the hell am I supposed to read THIS?

No, this is not literally the Switch Lite's native resolution, but this is how the game actually looks on the modestly sized Switch Lite screen. It's abundantly clear that games like Rock of Ages II were designed for television sets, but this is not how millions of Switch owners are playing their games!

It goes back to what I was saying earlier about Nintendo wanting it both ways, but not making the necessary effort to ensure that the Switch can actually work as both a home console and a handheld. It doesn't. The only way it could is if every Switch game was designed with a handheld mode that increases the size and clarity of onscreen text, and game designers just don't want to bother. 

Hell, it's not even an issue exclusive to the Switch... Final Fantasy XV for the Playstation 4 was difficult to play even on high definition television sets, because the design team insisted on using tiny typesets. Sure, it let them squeeze more information on the screen, but what good is that if you can't read any of it?

Look, all I'm saying is that gamers like myself are getting older and less eagle-eyed than they used to be. Just because you can read those ant trails on the screen doesn't mean everyone else can. Just because you have no interest in the Switch Lite doesn't mean that your games don't need accommodations for the millions who own them. The next time you want to make something in your game bigger and bolder, why not start with the text?

Zeni to the Max

By now I'm sure you've heard the news.

image from Throwbacks

Well yeah, the Animaniacs are making a comeback on Hulu, but that's not what I meant. Microsoft just purchased Zenimax, and by proxy, Bethesda Softworks, for the sum of seven and a half billion dollars. That's more money than I'll ever see in twenty lifetimes. 

Microsoft is now in charge of a lot of franchises that were big in the 1990s and 2000s. Doom! Quake! The Elder Scrolls! Fallout! Gamers who were originally going to cast their lot with the Playstation 5 are now understandably worried that their system of choice will not be getting these titles. It certainly explains Microsoft's recent platform inclusive tweets, which suggested that Santa Claus left 34th Street and took up a job as the company's social media spokesman. You see, Microsoft was never really worried that players would abandon the Xbox for another game console... they knew that as long as they held the keys to the next Doom sequel, they couldn't.

Anyway! I wanted to mention that I'm finally making some headway on Squirrel Burger Cookout, the Neo-Geo ports book. Here's a sample chapter, if you'd like to check it out. Previously, I had been beating my head on other word processors and desktop publishers, but Kurt Kalata from Hardcore Gaming 101 recommended that I try Affinity Publisher instead, and it. is. BRILLIANT. It does 90% of what I want with little struggle, and the other ten percent just requires a bit of online research. It's intuitive like Microsoft Publisher, yet powerful like Scribus! It's the total package!

The proposed layout for the book is a little plain at the moment, but it gets the job done. I'd be satisfied with it looking like this, if not deliriously happy. I'm talking to Kurt now to see what he would recommend... hopefully he'll get back to me in a week or so. That ought to give me enough time to scrape together the cash to buy the full version of Affinity Publisher and really go to town on this project...

Hindsight is Always Three Dimensional

Quick, name a product with a 3D focus that's no longer in production!

Image from Columbia.EDU

Well, there's that too. But I was thinking of something with less nacho dust.

Image from eBay

Yeah, that. After a bungled launch and nine moderately successful years on the market, the 3DS has been retired by Nintendo. Yes, that includes the more recent deluxe and budget models. It's not to say that you can't still find good uses for a 3DS... the New model with the upgraded processor has a quartet of homebrew console emulators that are more user friendly and run better than anything you'll find on the Playstation Vita, the system's hapless rival. If you're waiting for officially licensed 3DS software, though, you might be waiting a while. Perhaps billions of years, if there's any truth to the theory of a cyclical timeline.

The 3DS was fun while it lasted, though... and it lasted quite a while! I still have a lot of memories tied to this system, like how badly I wanted it after it launched. The technological shortcomings of the standard DS were starting to chafe, and the promise of a handheld with near-GameCube quality graphics had me licking my lips like a hyena that stumbled upon an elephant graveyard. Sadly, the 3DS proved elusive until two years later, when an acquaintance gifted me one after he upgraded to one of the XL models.

It looks a little rough now, but yanno, 2011.
(image from Amazon)

An equal measure of fun and frustration soon followed. I put a lot of time into the system's star attraction, Super Street Fighter IV... it obviously didn't look as nice as its console counterparts, but it had nearly all the content (plus an odd gachapon mode where you could collect figurines of all the characters) and it played pretty well, with the touchscreen making up for the system's lack of face buttons. 

On the downside, there was Kid Icarus Uprising... its graphics were downright breathtaking by handheld standards, with Pit gliding over vast cityscapes and battling enormous (yet often silly) monsters, but its visual luster couldn't disguise the ugliness of the control. Thanks to the lack of a second analog stick, I felt like I needed all the hands of a legendary Greek monster just to play it. The torturous grind to unlock new weapons didn't help its appeal much either. Sure there are tons of clubs, wands, and swords to collect and combine, but I would have been happier with just one weapon that did a reasonable amount of damage...

You're still a dink, rabbit.

Soon afterward, I moved to Arizona, and found not only a 3DS XL of my own, but a love for Nintendo's daring but distressingly short-lived social media experiment Miiverse. More of my 3DS time was spent scratching out black and white pictures and posting them to the service than actually playing games. I also developed an equally passionate hatred for the Arcade Bunny, the annoyingly chipper, occasionally schizophrenic rabbit who wanted real cash for chances to win simulated enamel pins you could put on your system's home page. I'm embarrassed to admit that I gave more of my money to the bunny than any rational adult should. I'm not at all embarrassed to admit that I heaped abuse on him in Miiverse whenever the opportunity presented itself.

The New 3DS was a worthy follow up to
the original model, but I still question the
wisdom of that stubby second stick.

A few years later, the 3DS XL was retired to a drawer and replaced with the New 3DS XL. They were selling them for half the suggested retail price at K-Mart, but since our local store was in the process of shutting down, I had to request a price match from a nearby Wal-Mart. At the time, the New 3DS XL seemed like a pointless, extravagant purchase, but in hindsight, its added horsepower really did improve the overall experience. Miiverse loaded faster, games ran slightly better, and the 3D that was so spotty on previous models was greatly improved with a head tracking sensor. That faint red LED looks creepy in low light conditions, like your system was possessed by the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but you can't argue with the results!

It's been three years, but I never really
got over this.

After the death of Miiverse in late 2017, my enthusiasm for the 3DS, and Nintendo in general, sputtered out. The Vita became my handheld of choice, although I really wasn't doing much with it beyond playing PSP titles I bought on Sony's online store and old arcade games in Final Burn Alpha. I'd pick up the 3DS occasionally to play a round of Kirby: Planet Robobot, but reading news posts made it clear that the system was running out of fresh releases... and running out of time. I purchased a Switch Lite last April, in anticipation of the 3DS's inevitable demise... and now the dual screen handheld is officially history.

Would I say the 3DS was a better system than the Switch? Not really. People complain about the quality of games on the Switch eShop, but the 3DS eShop was far, far worse, loaded with shovelware that demanded the extra power of the New 3DS, yet would have been underwhelming on the decades-old NES. The hardware suffered from shortsighted design (why make a handheld with a single analog stick six years after everybody complained about the single stick on the PSP?), and promising services like Miiverse, Swapnote, and Nintendo Video were ended prematurely, frustrating the system's owners.

Steve, aka OkayGreyOwl, drew this image
as a farewell gift to everyone he met on
Miiverse. That's my bear alter ego on the left.

Despite all that, I got a lot of emotional mileage out of the 3DS. I still remember running off to McDonald's with system in hand to catch a few stray puzzle pieces from other users, so I could finish that interactive diorama of Kirby, or Mario, or that goofy mutt who wanted to sell me mini-games. I recall all the time I spent on Miiverse, not only posting doodles but admiring the work of others, which frequently pushed the boundaries of a tiny, monochrome digital canvas. I remember scooping up cheap software at game stores and pawn shops and Humble Bundles, and having a lot of fun with everything I found. (Well, maybe not Asphalt 3D.) I fondly look back at the dozens of hours I spent playing Smash Run, and slowly developing an appreciation for the Smash Bros. series after years of shunning it. I remember settling my nerves during hospital visits by watching episodes of Bravest Warriors on Nintendo Video. This thing is just packed with memories, and I'm sure I'm missing some important ones.

Wait, there's this one. Wayne Brady from
Let's Make a Deal totally helped save me
from a monster once. Let's see your
fancy-schmancy Switch do that.

There will never be a gaming experience quite like the 3DS, and it's not likely to be forgotten by the millions who owned it.