_NetNomad

oh, and Mika and the Witcj’s Mountain! it looks like a flying game but your flying is just double jumps boosted by gusts of winds- it’s secretly a platformer and a very fun one. this is another with a lot of dialogue though

if it’s the switch version of 3D World you’re emulating, have you tried Bowser’s Fury mode? imo 3D World is neat but Bowser’s Fury is absolutely phenomenal

Penny’s Big Breakaway is on Steam and it has movement options very similar to Oddessy paired with Sonic-style rolling gameplay. I think the bosses are a noticable weak point but the levels are fantastic. if you like the momentum stuff, Spark the Electric Jester 2 (cutscenes but you can skip ‘em) and 3 and Rollin’ Rascal (early access) are excellent as well

+1 for Kirby and the Forgotten World, magnificent game. if you feel particularly brave, the much maligned Balan Wonderworld is similar but with an emphasis on revisiting old levels with new powers ala LEGO Star Wars. i enjoyed it but most people did not so maybe save this one for a steep sale and a rainy day

Tech has hit a hard graphics plateau: raw generational updates are now nuanced upgrades measured in single-digit frame gains rather than evolutions anyone with eyes can appreciate

in my mind this happened a decade ago and people are only just now realizing that the emperor has no clothes

+1 for Bandcamp. they often run a “bandcamp friday” event where they waive their cut of all music sold that day, so almost everything (payment processors still take a cut) goes to the artist. there are also self-hosted alternatives to bandcamp like faircamp

people being nice online? god forbid!!!

so long as Nintendo remains a more niche player

???

i am 100% with you. there must be something to it if it’s that important to so many people but i genuinely can’t tell the difference as long as it’s stable

and if it does make a difference, for competitive games wouldn’t you want it to be consistent between all players instead of “better” based on whoever has more horsepower? it all makes no sense to me

it’s wild just how many Pokemon ROM hacks there are. there’s one that recreates Sword and Shield on the GBA and it’s pretty wild how faithful it is, it even has the raid battles. another cool one is Emerald ROWE which is an open world conversion where you can start anywhere. it uses some advanced hardware features so it doesn’t work in every emulator

there’s a hack of Sonic 3D Blast for the Saturn that basically chains all of the special stages into their own game, it’s a very cool look at what a true 3D Saturn Sonic could have been, even if the stages are all just halfpipes

if you count translations, i have poured an ungodly number of hours into Shiren the Wanderer 2 on the N64 (different from the Shiren 2 on the DS). it’s another one that doesn’t always play nice with emulators but if you take copious savestates you’ll be fine. each of the post-game dungeons is essentially a whole new game, and while i’m usually not much of a completionist i just can’t put it down

i was honestly bummed when Hyrule Historia came out and codified the timeline, because half of the fun of the series for me was trying to imagine where all these games that didn’t quite fit together fit together. that, and the third branch essentially being a what-if and relegating the original games to it felt like a dismissive cop-out. i appreciate how BotW was full of enough contradictory evidence to not be placed in any one timeline and then TotK doubled down by contradicting the original Imprisoning War, and now Nintendo has given up on placing them anywhere. we are so back