Tough Break

Greetings, programs. I'm not in good spirits right now... I learned a few days ago that my brother and his family contracted COVID-19. His wife and child are apparently fine, but the virus hit him like a wrecking ball. He's in emergency care, and I'm sitting here on the other side of the country, anxious and worried. Did he get vaccinated before he caught the disease, and if not, can he make it through this? After months of reading the Herman Cain Award subreddit, I'm less than optimistic about his chances.

Now I realize that death is a constant in life, but I always assumed that it would come later for my brother... you know, twenty or thirty years down the line. If I can be brutally honest, I also thought the end would be a better match for his brash, macho personality. You know, maybe he'd run afoul of a rutting buck on a hunting trip, or skid off the road and into a pole during an especially rough Michigan winter. Not something like this. It's so dreadfully... unremarkable. I hope he recovers for the sake of his wife and his sons and my mother and myself, but as stupid as it sounds, part of me thinks he deserves a more spectacular finale than this.

Gimme a break, gimme a break!
Break me off a piece of that... esoteric
and increasingly valuable game system.
(image from Wololo)

Anyway, you're here for video game crap, and I aim to deliver. Wololo.net reports that a hacker named tzmwx created a custom Sega Saturn handheld by splitting its motherboard in two, folding one half under the other, and connecting them with a tangle of wires. This feat of engineering means the system can fit inside a case barely larger than a Game Gear, but the thought of cracking a Saturn in half only to resurrect it later as a handheld makes an electronics klutz like myself drop half his body weight in flop sweat. Have you guys considered emulation instead? I mean, somebody's got to make a Saturn emulator that runs comfortably on an Android phone eventually, right?

Oh, there was one other thing I wanted to mention. ROMhacking.net recently published a metric crapload of hacks and translations, with a localization of the PC Engine title Rabio Lepus Special and an incredibly ambitious English translation of Bulk Slash for the Saturn as headliners. ROMhacking is down at the moment, but you can get all the deets on Bulk Slash on the Sega Saturn Shiro fan site. Those crazy funsters even included English voices for all the characters, and compatibility with the Virtual On twin stick! Don't worry; you won't have to saw your Saturn in half to play it.