The Dream We All Dream Of

I'm currently fascinated and slightly terrified by AI programs such as DALL-E and Midjourney. They take bits and pieces of existing online assets, and assemble them into new drawings, based on parameters entered by the user. You would think that a computer making its own artwork is the stuff of science fiction, but I've seen some of the stuff churned out by these programs, and it has genuine artistic merit. Someone instructed Midjourney to create images based on lyrics from the Electric Light Orchestra song Mr. Blue Sky, and what it produced were moody backgrounds and a nebulous face made of clouds. Wait, let me show you what I mean.

It's fascinating because it's stimulating artwork which demonstrates, or at least convincingly duplicates, creativity by the machine that created it. That could credibly pass for a being named Mr. Blue Sky, couldn't it? It's terrifying because I draw as a hobby, but know dozens of others who do it for a living, or at least for supplementary income. A computer program that can churn out furry artwork on a whim for ten dollars a month is going to put a big crimp in the incomes of living, breathing artists. After all, why buy the cow when you can get an extremely detailed, slightly eerie AI-generated cow for nearly free?

Anyway, enough of that. Speaking of seemingly impossible feats performed by modern technology, the Italian programmer Rinnegatamante (a name which is so much fun to say, you have no idea) has developed a Sega Dreamcast emulator for the Playstation Vita. This is one of the trickier emulators to install, requiring several plug-ins, and you're discouraged from taking the easy route with Autoplugin, but the end results are beyond what you would have expected from this abandoned and increasingly dated handheld. Capcom vs. SNK 2 is not perfect, but it's playable, and a portable version of that game is something I've wanted for a long, long time.

Under Defeat, shown at its actual frame rate!
No no, I kid. This is bound to improve after
a few updates.

Sadly, but perhaps expectedly, not every Dreamcast game runs well. In fact, Under Defeat, a vertical shooter released years after the Dreamcast's official demise, struggles mightily under Flycast, with the emulator trying its damnedest to keep up with the game's copious smoke effects. Drop a bomb and the software crawls, dropping to a single digit frame rate as it tries to juggle all the explosions and particle effects. Under Defeat is also a game I'd love to have on the go, but it just ain't happenin' on the Vita. At least, not yet.

What else? Oh yeah, the Astebros demo recently received an update, and it's shaping up to be one of the best games ever released for the venerable Sega Genesis. It's especially surprising, as previous builds didn't excite me much. However, this new build is like a whole new game, offering three playable characters with their own unique abilities, an overworld map, and some lip smackin', European-influenced graphics. It's at least as pretty as anything Psygnosis cranked out for the Genesis in its glory days, but the gameplay is tighter, more satisfying, and less punishing. Unlike Shadow of the Beast, this is no show pony that leaves a strong first impression but leaves a bad aftertaste.