I was at a party a while ago and this guy pulled one of those out and was playing roms and I made such a big soy face
People playing video games at parties? What kind of party was this? Yuk.
You have my sympathy. You deserve to be invited to a better class of party.
Or,
OR you could buy a Nintendo Switch and then pay a monthly fee for Nintendo Online and then also pay another monthly fee for Nintendo Online Plus and gain temporary,online-only access to like three emulators.
Sent from my Nintendo™ Switch™.
gaming can be a little meh for me but a device that really gets the fuck out of your way and let's you get straight to what you want to do? I can :so-true: to that
Holy shit computers really piss me off these days, it's dark patterns and rugpulls all the way down.
I have an Anbernic, it's pretty fucking great. The only downside was that the SNES ROMs were mostly Chinese bootlegs with unwanted hacks and TL patches (in Chinese of course) and the Arcade controls were very poorly configured. Apart from that, it's a beast. Heartily recc it. I also rec hacking a PSVita as an emulation device; it's really good at that.
Yeah, getting fresh ROMs was a piece of cake. I ended up just deleting the bootlegs and getting unhacked ROMs and chucking them on. Literally took minutes
I also rec hacking a PSVita as an emulation device; it’s really good at that.
Did this recently, also recommend it. Super easy to do and the price isn't bad either, I found mine on ebay for about $100 and you can get a little $5 adapter that lets you use normal microSD cards.
I also didn't realize how much more advanced Vita hacks are than 3DS hacks, there's literally an app that just lists all the PSP/Vita/PS1/etc games and you pick em and install em just like that.
The two most complicated and somewhat unsettling hacks I had to do was installing CFW on my PS3 and 3DS. Requiring a separate website to essentially remotely ping you a bit of bogus code to fool the hardware was a little worrying, especially if you had a live account on.
Ditto on the hacked vita. I used to play 3rd strike on pfba at a dive with two PS4 controllers. It was choppy, overclocking helped but didn't matter when you're blasted.
Hot take: most games actually aren’t all that good.
There are maybe a dozen you’ve played that you have nostalgia for and/or are actually good.
On the other hand, there’s a decent amount of modding effort that makes games better, especially in terms of QOL for older games.
"New games" in general turn me off because you know they replaced modding with spiderman dance costume DLC and then probably they're pay to win also.
The adoption of mechanics from slot machines really did a number on new games. I don't think they'll ever be the same.
Hot take: most games actually aren’t all that good.
Most everything actually isn't that good. But there's more than enough good stuff in the mess of bad stuff to occupy your time. I'm on hour 160 of Elden Ring, for instance. When I'm done with that, I've got half a dozen other high quality games in my queue.
On the other hand, there’s a decent amount of modding effort that makes games better, especially in terms of QOL for older games.
All the good Pokemon games are fan-made. Counterstrike, Team Fortress, and DOTA - three of the most popular games in the last twenty years - started out as mods of otherwise-decent FPS/RTS games. Minecraft and Roblox are basically just "What if we made modding the game the point of the game?"
That said, there's a certain amount of polish only a AAA developer can deliver. You're not going to get movie-quality cinematics or next gen graphics engines from the overwhelming majority of modders. And a lot of mods are at least as crappy as what gets turned out to the budget bin every year. The best mods tend to be labors of love that are comparable to fully developed and realized game franchises. And they tend to be attached to games that are, themselves, fun to play out of the box.
Elden ring is absolutely taking forever for me lol and that's not a bad thing. I already have like 60 hours in the game and I'm not done with my first playthrough
I've been eyeing the miyoo mini v2 but I really probably don't need one
Steam deck is running Linux and does all your emulation
I have a Retroid Pocket and it is a little piece of heaven forged of plastic and circuit boards.
They suck. They break quickly and there's a lag between when you press the button and the character onscreen reacts. Not a big deal with Pokemon but a very big deal with Mario.