Just You Wait!

Costly little SOB. I think I'll have to
get re-acquainted with my old friend
instant ramen for the rest of the month.
(image from Revive-It)

I guess I'm gonna have to, because I have almost, but not quite, enough equipment to build my very often budget-conscious gaming PC. I've got the cheapskate-approved Dell Optiplex 7020 with 16 gigs of RAM, a spacious two terabyte hard drive, and an i7 processor (translated to non-nerd: this thing was awesome six years ago), but it's the GPU that's holding me back. Someone was kind enough to give me a GTX 970, which was also awesome six years ago, but at the moment this PC doesn't have a power supply with the wattage to bring it to life. Complicating matters is the fact that this system also has an oddball 8 pin power connector, forcing me to buy an adapter before it recognizes anything but the barebones power supply Dell shipped with it.

What I do have in there currently is a Radeon 7 250, which to be honest probably wasn't awesome at any time in recorded history. Heck, it's not even as powerful as the GTX 750 OC I've got stashed in the Acer I bought at a yard sale way back in 2014. I've got this Dell running Windows and Steam, but thanks to the GPU bottleneck, it's not quite ready to tackle the relatively humble WipeOut clone Antigraviator. I mean, it plays. I just get the sneaking suspicion that it could play a lot better. I won't know for sure until I have the money to buy those missing components, and that won't happen for another month. Woe is bored, hopelessly nerdy me.

Speaking of things that will hopefully be worth the wait, I'm cooking up some Nintendo Switch reviews, in the same style as the brief game summaries I used to write for the PSP back when I was obsessed with that system. Ah... good times, good times!

(By the way, in case you were interested, I did manage to fix that PSP-2000. It was an improvised, chewed bubble gum and crossed fingers kind of job thanks to one of the bails breaking, but any crash you can walk away from, right?)

Technical Difficulties

Well, this kind of bites. I recently bought a PSP-2000 for a reasonable price, on the understanding that the screen was slightly buggered up and needed to be replaced. The problem is, while I did manage to remove the screen, I also managed to remove the tiny latch that holds the backlight cable in place. When I mean tiny, I mean it's literally a square that's a couple of millimeters high and wide. So when that replacement screen (finally) arrives, I'll have to make like MacGyver and glue the backlight cable, also rather small, in place so it doesn't jostle around after the system is reassembled. Cue groan of frustration.

Let me just state for the record that I kind of hate hardware mods. Software mods, those aren't a problem... I rarely screw these up, because it's just a matter of having the right equipment and following instructions. Hardware mods, though, that's a different story. They require the sight of a hawk and the dexterity of a neurosurgeon, and I have neither. With electronics being as small as they are in 2022 (and in the case of that PSP, well before that), you start to feel like Godzilla, trying his damnedest to not step on anyone or break any buildings as he wades through the streets of Tokyo. There's a reason he's had more luck as a force of nature than a hero.

What the radioactive dinosaur said.
(image from The Oatmeal, a web site which you
should already know about by now)

It's really a shame, too, because there are all kinds of situations where modding a game system at the microscopic level would be a handy skill. Take, for instance, my late model GameCube, which could have a digital out port grafted onto it if I had the skill. (I likely don't.) Or the MC2SIO, which lets the Playstation 2 run games straight from an SD card if I had the steady hands to do the wiring. (See previous parantheses.) There's a wealth of exciting possibilities, all well beyond my clumsy grasp.

Act 4: He Files for Divorce

It seems the honeymoon, and indeed, the whole marriage, is over between Pac-Man and his wife. Because AtGames currently holds some of the rights to the Ms. Pac-Man character, and because Namco was never really thrilled with her existence in the first place, they're purging her from other Pac-Man games, including the recently released Switch version of Pac-Land. Now, you'll find Pac-Mom at the end of every level, who looks like something Namco pulled out of their butts at the last minute. 

"Hi honey, I'm- who the hell are you people?!" 
(image from Ars Technica)

Namco did promise retribution after AtGames snuck off with the rights to Ms. Pac-Man, claiming that they would make the purchase useless. It seems this hasty Pac-ectomy is the first step toward keeping that promise, and with Pac-Man Museum Plus coming out in a couple of months, it's likely there will be more historical revisionism in the future.

By the way, Pac-Man's had another family on the side in Japan for years. This includes not only Pac-Mom, but Pac-Marie, Pac-Girl, and Pac Little as well. Pac Little isn't much different from Jr. Pac-Man, but Pac-Marie... well, just look at her. 

image from the Pac-Man Wiki

She lacks the glamour and maturity of Ms. Pac-Man, looking instead like the sweet, naïve girl next door type. Namco implied that she actually was Ms. Pac-Man in the past, but considering the current situation, they're probably going to backpedal on those suggestions in a hurry.

More importantly, what will happen to the Ms. Pac-Man game? For the moment, you can still buy it on the Xbox Marketplace, but until Namco and AtGames come to an agreement (and Namco doesn't seem in an agreeable mood at the moment), you probably won't be finding it on any future game systems. That's unfortunate, as it's widely regarded to be better than the original Pac-Man, with brighter colors, more variety, and those bedeviled bouncing fruits which always seem just out of reach. 

With the exception of Pac-Man Arrangement, none of the other Pac-Man sequels and spin-offs could hold a candle to Ms. Pac-Man, whether they were Midway's legally dubious extensions of the franchise (Jr. Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, Professor Pac-Man) or Namco's official creations (Super Pac-Man, Pac and Pal, Pac-Mania). With this in mind, one hopes that Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man's separation will not be a permanent one. Somehow I doubt gamers are going to be satisfied with Exciting New! Pac-Man Plus as a substitute.

Switching Sides

Seems City Connection isn't done with its shiny new Zebra Engine just yet. The proprietary Sega Saturn emulator for the Switch, previously used in three obscure games by Success, will be making its encore in the upcoming S-Tribute line, featuring a handful of 1990s arcade titles by Taito. 

The games offered in S-Tribute include Puzzle Bobble 2x and 3, Cleopatra Fortune, Metal Black, Layer Section, and most tantalizing of all, Elevator Action Returns. Not many people have played this one, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who has and didn't enjoy it... even the irascible Angry Video Game Nerd heaped on the praise for this sleek action title in his review of the two Taito Legends collections for Xbox and Playstation 2.

There are just two problems. The first is that the Zebra Engine brought significant lag to the first three games that used it. Luckily, that seems to have been smoothed out in Layer Section, if early YouTube reviews of the Japanese demo are any indication. The second issue is that these games aren't scheduled for release in America, and may never officially arrive on these shores. You can always circumvent this with a Japanese Switch account, but a native release in English would be a lot more convenient.

Whatever happens, it's fantastic that the Switch library is bursting at the seams with arcade hits, with more coming this late in the system's life. Like the GameBoy and 3DS before it, it looks like the Switch will be sticking around for a while, to my wallet's great relief.