Microsurgeon

Come along and ride on the Fantastic Voyage!
(image from INTV Funhouse. TV Funhouse.
TV Funhouse. Come back with my show!)

You know, I had Microsurgeon for the Intellivision, once upon a time. It was one of those recklessly ambitious, conceptually brilliant games on the system like Utopia or B-17 Bomber or Hover Strike which glued you to your television even after the metal bar on the front of the system got so hot it burned to the touch.

But this post isn't about THAT kind of microsurgeon! Rather, it's about me having to install a new thumbstick in my Switch. I started the procedure feeling rather anxious, and ended it with a sense of accomplishment, coupled with some resentment that it was even necessary in the first place. Come on, Nintendo, you're supposed to be the champions when it comes to console reliability! Remember that GameBoy you recovered from Desert Storm, with its exterior burned to a crisp by napalm but its innards still capable of playing Tetris? How about the GameCube, which took a licking from Morgan Von Webb and kept on ticking? Now it feels like you've taken a step back to the days of the NES, with its flashing screens and finicky cartridge slot. Sure, gamers can buy a replacement JoyCon, if they can afford it... or even find it.

Since I couldn't, I had to go with invasive surgery... and while the thumbstick swap was a success, I struggle to think of another system which forced me to do this and made it so difficult. Do you know how small the components are inside a JoyCon? Small. "Insert Johnny Carson joke here" small. Small enough that I had to use a friggin' toothpick to push the power cable back into its proper slot. This is not a user-friendly fix, yet it's precisely what thousands of players have had to do because drifting has been such a widespread problem, and replacement JoyCons have been anything but widespread! Bad Nintendo! No biscuit!

Oh, by the way, this is what remained of the factory installed thumbstick:

It straight up disintegrated after I opened the JoyCon case and removed the screws holding it in place. Looks like at Nintendo, quality is job none!

Hmph. Anyway. Games just keep on comin' for the Dreamcast thanks to Megavolt85 and yzb. The duo just ported KenJu, a 2.5D fighter I didn't even know existed until this week, to the system, along with a prototype called Force Five, whose assets were repurposed in a different fighting game. It's even more entertainment from the game console that would not die.