#PS3 games on your PC

[tronlightcyclerun]

screaming and shaking the disney execs WHY THE FUCK ARE THERE THREE !!! THREE !!!! VERSIONS OF EVOLUTION AND WHY DID YOU BREAK THE PC VERSION BY STOPPING USING THE SERVICE IT RUNS OFF OF !!!! IM GOING TO KILL YOU WITH HAMMERS

[thathomestar]

I know generations are centered around consoles, but if play games on PC or a handheld was your first system, then just pick which gen was going on at the time

If you don't play video games then move along

[foone]

AAA games? Pfft. Indie games? Double pfft.

I only play games from the alternate history where Hillary Clinton was elected in 2008 and banned all video games. You can only imagine how weird their underground gaming scene is. People like to call unlicensed games "bootlegs" but they've got actual bootlegged games! I've played games about helping your grandmother in hospice care realize she's a lesbian by reading Sappho to her, at 2am in a speakeasy in Baltimore. The cops raided it the next night, hundreds of Gamers were arrested. They posted pictures all over Friendster of the Baltimore PD destroying the arcades with axes.

I nearly got busted once because I was imaging old disks from a 386 and someone tipped off the gaming cops that there was a copy of Commander Keen in there. I had to prove that I didn't know it, I was imaging the disks blind and then indexing them later, and I would of course turn over any contraband to the proper authorities.

I was already on a watch list because I'd been known to have some gamedev-related activities pre-ban. They can't arrest me for making games back in 2007 when it was still legal, but they do want to keep an eye on me since I have the skills to break the law.

Anyway that universe's bootlegs are mainly PC games. Can't really have console games if there hasn't been a console release since the Wii/PS3/360 era. At one point Nintendo threatened to release the Wii SDK so game devs in the US could make unlicensed games, but that didn't happen as there were quickly no functional Wiis left in the US, except for very rare holdouts that never move. PC games are easy to distribute samizdat and hide on a USB stick or CD-R labeled "nickelback".

Japan's games industry is still going, so the later Nintendo and Sony consoles still exist, but Microsoft got out of the business of course. They sold the franchise to Sega who were hoping to release the 360 successor (the Xbox One in our universe) as the Sega Phoenix but it never materialized, either through their own financial incompetence or because of pressure from the US. There's a lot of international treaties that the US has pushed "and this aid only goes through if you ban games" clauses into. That would have been an official UN resolution if the USSR hadn't vetoed it. For once, thank God for the security council, eh?

I mainly get my gaming news through Japanese gaming sites (through a set of VPNs, since they're blocked at the border firewall), and some tor onion site run by a weird guy in Minnesota who is obsessed with documenting all the underground US games.

There's a lot being worked on, but it's always a tricky trade off. Too much attention and the police might be able to track down the creators, and it's basically impossible to fund underground games, as the VISA/PayPal etc funds get seized immediately. There's a whole task force for that.

Anyway one of the weirdest differences between our two time lines is that they've gone back and edited out gaming from a bunch of movies. Those that they can, of course. War games was just banned because they couldn't remove the tic tac toe ending. The Net just removed the scene at the beginning where she's playing Wolfenstein 3D, by recording some new screen footage and a new voice over. She's fixing a spreadsheet in the new edition.

(Yes, I've seen The Net from this alternate timeline. On Laserdisc, of course. I'm just that kind of person!)

They even edited Star Wars. You know that scene where R2-D2 is playing holochess with Chewie? They edited it to be a board game instead of holograms, because that made it too "video gamey".

Technically it's not illegal to show gaming in a movie, but it needs to be an 18+ film and you have to show the deleterious effects of gaming and/or the gamesters coming to a bad end.

This has affected films less than you'd think, to be honest. They were never great about showing video games even before they banned them.

Anyway, go have fun playing your AAA games with hundred-million-dollar budgets. I only play indie games made by people under a constant threat of arrest for their art.

[gloochi]

This song is so fucking wild to me 'cuz it plays during the first mission and the super fucked up alternate final mission. This is the theme of the killer the corporations wanted you to be, so it plays when you're first proving yourself as a mercenary and then again at the end of the game if you prove that you have no morals and only care about the money by taking a job to annihilate a metric fuckton of civilians. This song represents the antithesis of For Answer's core themes and messages. It represents someone who never found their answer, their reason to fight. It represents greed unrestrained by morality. For Answer is genuinely so fucking good. It's one of FromSoft's best, and I need more people to play it.

I GOT CHROME HEAD FIND IT, POUND IT I GOT STEEL HEART TURN IT, BEAT IT

[ SERENE HAZE ] : We've confirmed all targets destroyed. Mission complete. Well done. Almost perfect. But don't get too high on yourself yet, rookie. These enemies were nothing to write home about.

from Armored Core: For Answer Original Soundtrack (2008)

[charkepin]

VIDEO GAME: YAKUZA 0

Charles Gabrielle L. Pineda BSIT - 1A

OVERVIEW

Ref: PressStartOnce - Yakuza 0 Title Screen (PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox One)

Well to explain this game in easier terms… it is very random and very funny. This game is actually a prequel to the original game Yakuza, or mostly known as "Yakuza Kiwami" because it got remastered. Yakuza 0 is an action-adventure game set in an open world environment and played from a third-person perspective. The game takes place from December 1988 to January 1989, in Kamurochō and Sotenbori, fictionalized recreations of Tokyo's Kabukichō and Osaka's Dōtonbori areas respectively. The game received a lot of praise for it's engaging story, character development, and a rich blend of serious and humorous vibes. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza_0

THE PROTAGONISTS

Everyone knows that a story will never be interesting without interesting main characters... At least that's what they say, right? Well, that's what you get in this game. Your first protagonist: Kazuma Kiryu, a junior Tojo Clan yakuza in Kamurochō who is forced out of the clan due to a murder accusation(This particular arc is very long to explain). While the other protagonist: Goro Majima, a disgraced former Tojo Clan yakuza who works as a cabaret manager in Sotenbori to earn his way back into the clan. Both these men are excellent in humorous scenes in the game. A lot of their movements are very similar from each other. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakuza_0

 Kamurochō

This is Kamurochō, a fictional district of Tokyo from Sega's Yakuza media franchise. It is modelled after Kabukichō, Tokyo's renowned red-light district and entertainment precinct situated in Shinjuku ward. This location is still used to this day. Last seen in Yakuza: Like a Dragon released in 2020, that it has been updating since time passes by. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamuroch%C5%8D

"KIRYU"SION

https://www.reddit.com/r/yakuzagames/comments/ooxf2c/i_cant_stop_fucking_laughing_at_this_picture/

Well overall, this game is a lot of fun like a LOT of fun. If you're into games that balances seriousness and humor. I had no idea about this game before because I wasn't really into japanese games that much. When I first entered the atmosphere of this game, it blew me away. It was like I was missing out a lot. This game really serves the best quality story wise, gameplay wise, and comedy wise. I can confidently say that this game is really a masterpiece.

[dragonageconfessions]

CONFESSION:

My cat was diagnosed with lung cancer today 3/10/2024. Nothing can be done to stop it. I'm looking through photos of him this eve & found a bunch of him sitting around my desk and even on my head while I played DAO & DA2. DAI wasn't out yet. Time with someone you love is so precious. I'd give ANYTHING to go back in time and be with him while I gamed for thousands of hours. He'd even sandwich himself between my back & the chair and nap. I love my cat so much. He's even named after a minor character in 1st game. I never had much money for pc's, so I had to play DAI on my old PS3. I have pics of him laying on my bed while I played that! I don't know how to let him go. If anyone suspects their cat has a severe hairball or asthma, get an x-ray asap. Bloodwork didn't show anything. This started about 1.5 months ago, and now I have to be parted from him this week and can't stop crying.

Dear Confessor,

As a cat owner I just wanted to send you my sympathy and to let you know I 100% understand how you are feeling. I've grown up with pets my whole life and its painful to lose them. This is my cat and he's going to be 15 this year. I got him around the time of Origins. He used to bat the screen with his paws when certain scenes came up when I was playing. He still likes hang out with us when we play games and he provides a calming influence. Cry as much as you need to! There is nothing wrong with that. And keep all those memories in your heart.

-SMC

.

[devsgames]

Game Optimization and Production

I wanted to write a bit of a light primer about optimization and how it relates to game production in the event people just don't know how it works, based on my experience as a dev. I'm by no means an expert in optimization myself, but I've done enough of it on my own titles and planned around it enough at this point to understand the gist of what it comes down to and considerations therein. Spoilers: games being unoptimized are rarely because devs are lazy, and more because games are incredibly hard to make and studios are notoriously cheap.

(As an aside, this was largely prompted by seeing someone complaining about how "modern" game developers are 'lazy' because "they don't remember their N64/Gamecube/Wii/PS2 or PS3 dropping frames". I feel compelled to remind people that 'I don't remember' is often the key part of the "old consoles didn't lag" equation, because early console titles ABSOLUTELY dropped frames and way more frequently and intensely than many modern consoles do. Honestly I'd be willing to bet that big budget games on average have become more stable over time. Honorable mention to this thread of people saying "Oh yeah the N64 is laggy as all hell" :') )

Anywho, here goes!

Optimization

The reason games suffer performance problems isn't because game developers are phoning it in or half-assing it (which is always a bad-faith statement when most devs work in unrealistic deadlines, for barely enough pay, under crunch conditions). Optimization issues like frame drops are often because of factors like ~hardware fragmentation~ and how that relates to the realities of game production.

I think the general public sees "optimization" as "Oh the dev decided to do a lazy implementation of a feature instead of a good one" or "this game has bugs", which is very broad and often very misguided. Optimization is effectively expanding the performance of a game to be performance-acceptable to the maximum amount of people - this can be by various factors that are different for every game and its specific contexts, from lowering shader passes, refactoring scripts, or just plain re-doing work in a more efficient way. Rarely is it just one or two things, and it's informed by many factors which vary wildly between projects.

However, the root cause why any of this is necessary in the first place is something called "Platform Fragmentation".

What Is Fragmentation

"Fragmentation" is the possibility space of variation within hardware being used to run a game. Basically, the likelihood that a user is playing a game on a different hardware than the one you're testing on - if two users are playing your game on different hardware, they are 'fragmented' from one another.

As an example, here's a graphic that shows the fragmentation of mobile devices based on model and user share. The different sizes are how many users are using a different type of model of phone:

As you can tell, that's a lot of different devices to have to build for!

So how does this matter?

For PC game developers, fragmentation means that an end-user's setup is virtually impossible to predict, because PC users frequently customize and change their hardware. Most PC users potentially have completely different hardware entirely.

Is your player using an up-to-date GPU? CPU? How much RAM do they have? Are they playing on a notebook? A gaming laptop? What brand hardware are they using? How much storage space is free? What OS are they using? How are they using input?

Moreover PC parts don't often get "sunsetted" whole-cloth like old consoles do, so there's also the factor of having to support hardware that could be coming up on 5, 10 or 15 years old in some cases.

For console developers it's a little easier - you generally know exactly what hardware you're building for, and you're often testing directly on a version of the console itself. This is a big reason why Nintendo's first party titles feel so smooth - because they only build for their own systems, and know exactly what they're building for at all times. The biggest unknowns are usually smaller things like televisions and hookups therein, but the big stuff is largely very predictable. They're building for architecture that they also made themselves, which makes them incredibly privileged production-wise!

Fragmentation basically means that it's difficult - or nearly impossible - for a developer to know exactly what their users are playing their games on, and even more challenging to guarantee their game is compatible everywhere.

Benchmarking

Since fragmentation makes it very difficult to build for absolutely everybody, at some point during development every developer has to draw a line in the sand and say "Okay, [x] combination of hardware components is what we're going to test on", and prioritize that calibre of setup before everything else. This is both to make testing easier (so testers don't have to play the game on every single variation of hardware), and also to assist in optimization planning. This is a "benchmark".

Usually the benchmark requirements are chosen for balancing visual fidelity, gameplay, and percentage of the market you're aiming for, among other considerations. Often for a game that is cross-platform for both PC and console, this benchmark will be informed by the console requirements in some way, which often set the bar for a target market (a cross-platform PC and console game isn't going to set a benchmark that is impossible for a console to play, though it might push the limits if PC users are the priority market). Sometimes games hit their target benchmarks, sometimes they don't - as with anything in game development it can be a real crap shoot.

In my case for my games which are often graphically intensive and poorly made by myself alone, my benchmark is often a machine that is approximately ~5 years old and I usually take measures to avoid practices which are generally bad and can build up to become very expensive over time. Bigger studios with more people aiming at modern targets will likely prioritize hardware from within the last couple years to have their games look the best for users with newest hardware - after all, other users will often catch up as hardware evolves.

This benchmark allows devs to have breathing room from the fragmentation problem. If the game works on weaker machines - great! If it doesn't - that's fine, we can add options to lower quality settings so it will. In the worst case, we can ignore it. After all, minimum requirements exist for a reason - a known evil in game development is not everyone will be able to run your game.

Making The Game

As with any game, the more time you spend on something is the more money being spent on it - in some cases, extensive optimization isn't worth the return of investment. A line needs to be drawn and at some point everyone can't play your game on everything, so throwing in the towel and saying "this isn't great, but it's good enough to ship" needs to be done if the game is going to ship at all.

Optimizing to make sure that the 0.1% of users with specific hardware can play your game probably isn't worth spending a week on the work. Frankly, once you hit a certain point some of those concerns are easier put off until post-launch when you know how much engagement your game has, how many users of certain hardware are actually playing, and how much time/budget you have to spend post-launch on improving the game for them. Especially in this "Games As A Service" market, people are frequently expecting games to receive constant updates on things like performance after launch, so there's always more time to push changes and smooth things out as time goes on. Studios are also notoriously squirrelly with money, and many would rather get a game out into paying customer's hands than sit around making sure that everything is fine-tuned (in contrast to most developers who would rather the game they've worked on for years be fine-tuned than not).

Comparatively to the pre-Day One patch era; once you printed a game on a disc it is there forever and there's no improving it or turning back. A frightening prospect which resulted in lots of games just straight up getting recalled because they featured bugs or things that didn't work. 😬

Point is though, targeted optimization happens as part of development process, and optimization in general often something every team helps out with organically as production goes on - level designers refactor scripts to be more efficient, graphics programmers update shaders to cut down on passes, artists trim out poly counts where they can to gradually achieve better performance. It's an all-hands-on-deck sort of approach that affects all devs, and often something that is progressively tracked as development rolls on, as a few small things can add up to larger performance issues.

In large studios, every developer is in charge of optimizing their own content to some extent, and some performance teams are often formed to be dedicated to finding the easiest, safest and quickest optimization wins. Unless you plan smartly in the beginning, some optimizations can also just be deemed to dangerous and out-of-reach to carry out late in production, as they may have dependencies or risk compromising core build stability - at the end of the day more frames aren't worth a crashing game.

Conclusion

Games suffer from performance issues because video game production is immensely complex and there's a lot of different shifting factors that inform when, how, and why a game might be optimized a certain way. Optimization is frequently a production consideration as much as a development one, and it's disingenuous to imply that games lag because developers are lazy.

I think it's worth emphasizing that if optimization doesn't happen, isn't accommodated, or perhaps is undervalued as part of the process it's rarely if ever because the developers didn't want to do it; rather, it's because it cost the studio too much money. As with everything in our industry, the company is the one calling the final shots in development. If a part of a game seems to have fallen behind in development it's often because the studio deemed it acceptable, refused to move deadlines or extend a hand to help it come together better at fear of spending more money on it. Rarely if ever should individual developers be held accountable for the failings of companies!

Anywho, thanks for reading! I know optimization is a weird mystical sort of blind spot for a lot of dev folks, so I hope this at least helps shed some light on considerations that weigh in as part of the process on that :) I've been meaning to write a more practical workshop-style step-by-step on how to profile and spot optimization wins at some point in the future, but haven't had the time for it - hopefully I can spin something up in the next few weeks!

[escherstrange-ffxiv]

Because @lynxden somehow missed [this post], I am going to make up for it with a slightly longer, wordier post, because, well, nine years, folks.

This involved digging into my external HDD and Facebook for old pics since everything pre-SB was lost. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.

Feb 2015

When I finally jumped into the PS3 Free Trial (it only had 20 days playtime and would delete your chara if you didn't buy the game in 90 days so no meme) I was in a very shitpost-y mood, giggling during character creation.

Pink hair so healers could see him a mile away. Make pink his thing. Give him facial hair because SE men don't have enough facial hair. The scar is from a shaving accident (you can tell I don't shave).

There was no gpose function, only hide HUD but back then screenshots were only to show funny ingame things, not as a form of photography. He wore this robe for AGES because apparently no other gear was better.

2017

"What do you mean I have three lights and they all shine into his face- oh."

The first Gpose I put on IG! This is special because I read a guide that told me how to position lights.

And then I learned how to pretend he was taking a selfie. The world of Gpose was opening up.

I also removed Escher's facial hair because it didn't go with the Aymeric hair. Suddenly he was ✨handsome✨!

Oh no.

2019

Permanently free from my mother's voice in my head telling me to be a functional member of society, I dived into FFXIV with a gusto I never had in any other MMORPG in my life. I actively spoke to my FC, joined raids at 3 AM because EU, started looking up screenshots on Twitter wanting to replicate certain shots for practice.

And then the prevalence of shaders and mods hit me like a brick to my PS4.

A new feeling was born: Spite.

Spite converted my FC room into a studio. Spite that said I would take good shots from my PS4 as the biggest middle finger to anyone who said, "oh vanilla pics will never be good without shaders/mods".

Spite earned me almost USD 50 worth of Mogstation credit from winning screenshot contests so don't knock it until you've tried it!

Escher also turned into a Lala! Lalascher was suuuper cute but it made ingame relationships weird (their words, not mine) and I didn't like the jump animation so back to-

-I MEAN I BOUGHT A SET OF 3, MIGHT AS WELL USE IT?!

Catscher lasted even shorter than Lalascher. I REALLY couldn't stand the tail sticking out of everything, even long skirts (shouldn't a tail technically be under a skirt and pop out like a bustle or-).

2021

In 2019 my house burned down so I had to get an emergency laptop. I finally had a PC capable of playing games so I installed FFXIV on it...with Gshade.

But then stuff happened. You know, the point in every FFXIV player's life where interpersonal relationships affect their mental health. Yeah, that.

I resubbed wanting to use more shaders EXCEPT my laptop's framerate would drop to single digits if I activated anything above gameplay presets so my laptop was only used to log RP chats.

I still play on console because I can play on a big TV screen while still looking at Discord without the overlay wigging out on me. So if I take pictures in new expansions it's always going to be vanilla.

The spite had calmed down a LOT but I already knew what I was capable of. The next step was just figuring out more new and interesting shots.

I also went back to taking pictures of interesting things in game.

2022

I bit the bullet and built a PC. For Gshade. I am 100% serious. Then the whole Gshade thing happened but I ALREADY HAVE A NICE PC FOR THIS, YOU THINK SOME DRAMA IS GOING TO STOP ME? FOOL, SPITE IS MY BLOOD. (I use reshade now)

So have more vanilla pics!

Also Escher became a bani! He was very handsome but the lack of hats was a dealbreaker. Bunnyscher lasted 6 months and was incorporated into the lore as Campanella Strange, First of Their Name, who kicked Escher's soul into the lifestream and borrowed his body-

I'll stop here. Feel free to ask for more details.

Learning to use crime tools meant I could take an alt to JP studios and pose different characters in them. Guilty? Yes. Thrilling? Hell yes.

2023-2024

Aka "The Moon Years". That's it, that's all you need to know. Gosh, there sure are some beautiful clothes out there. Also Escher finally changed his hairstyle after...five years???

I will still die on the vanilla hill though.

Bonus shot of Escher's hairstyles:

And that's it! Thank you for reading the great wall of text, I hope you found it worth your time!

Tagging? I don't know, looks like everyone on tumblr has done this by now, but I'd tag @furys-mercy just because I'd like to see what Mercer looked like in the early days.

[sometipsygnostalgic]

Video game console and case design

Today's hyperfixation is on the PLAYSTATION 5. Because I want one, but I really shouldn't buy one, so I am just looking up everything to do with games consoles and burning my brain out.

I used to be a proper xbox player, until I got my PC, then I never really touched by xbox again. I got a PS4 to play Persona 5 and since then it's been a blu ray player for my Adventure Time boxset, not much else. But the current gen - PS5, Series X - is arguably more powerful than my gaming PC, and I still have a lot of friends stuck on PS5, so I am considering investing in a unit.

Anyway is it me or did they really shit the bed with design in this generation?

Look at these chunky fuckers! They do not fit smoothly under your television at all. There is no detail or decoration breaking up their unnecessarily large faces, which makes them look bland and ugly. They look like they're made of cheap plastic, with the two controllers being the highest quality thing about them. I can attest the xbox controller is unbeatable, but playstation really made their shot this generation. A shame I can never get used to the dualshock joystick positioning.

The Series S and the PS5 Slim are almost NO improvement on the base designs.

For some reason they made the Series S look like a speaker???

The new PS5 slim FINALLY has a line across that massive faceplate, but the half matte half glossed finish is not doing it any favours. I think it would've looked much better if, for example, the matte and gloss plates were different colours. Like black and white! It also has an even MORE out of place disc drive, which I think is part of Sony's agenda to go digital only, and the two tiny "feet" for its horizontal positioning are pathetic! Personally I like this more than the original but not significantly, disappointing since I was really looking forward to it.

I want you to compare these nasties to the previous generation - the PS4 and the XBOX One.

....Now, what's hilarious about this image is the consoles look ALMOST IDENTICAL from this angle. And, I guess, that would be why Sony and Microsoft decided to make such a departure with the space heater PS5 and the fridge Series X.

But they both look very premium and advanced, and they fit very nicely in your living room.

The companies tried to look a bit more distinguished in their followup versions in the previous gen too. The white PS4 Pro looks a lot closer to PS5 with its quirkiness, but without the atrocious shiny plastic. Sony tended to add or remove a layer whenever they altered the PS4, I wonder what they would look like all stacked on top of each other.

It's not just the games console designs that suffer - Look at the game cases! I know that the companies want to incentivise you to go digital, but Xbox Series X cases are just awful.

So if you're confused - You should be!!! Microsoft have two kinds of case for the Series X. One of them is the EXACT SAME CASE as Xbox One, but with Series X printed on the front. The second newer version foregoes the sexy Xbox logo entirely and just has Xbox Series X printed in some default font. Awful awful awful.

Playstation is doing better, but barely.

They are reusing PS4 cases with a different print on them. It doesn't look as horrible as Xbox's, and it at least has a different colour on the logo, but damn, the jump between PS3/360 and PS4/One was really impressive, and now they've stopped bothering because they want everyone to go digital. If your game cases look like shit, why bother with physical?

I want to contrast with physical media kings Nintendo, who did an outstanding job in 2017 with designing the case for the Nintendo Switch.

These bad boys are mine. They're super thin, easy to stack, decent quality, and F U N. The red colour pallette makes them pop out. You can see one from across the store and go, "damn, that's a Nintendo Switch game".

I just want a thousand of them.

I would say a disadvantage, especially compared to the Gamecube games next to them, and even compared to 3ds, is that you can't tell what game you're looking at without going right up to them. These cases are TOO uniform, and really tiny, so i have to triple check I am picking up Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and not Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Meanwhile you can tell exactly what Gamecube games I have by colour pallette alone. Like, you can instantly tell that's Windwaker.

The switch in general is a very fun looking games console, much nicer looking than its predecessor the Wii U, though I'm not sure how I feel about the white of the OLED. But every time I see a Switch Lite in stores, even though I know it's worse than my Switch, I want to buy one. It just looks so FUUUUUN.

And finally a special mention to the 3DS and its games case. The console itself was pretty stylish, if... rudimentary for its release period, but the games cases are high quality and almost make me want to have 3ds games just so I can have the cases.

[tackyink]

This was supposed to be for @asususasa but in the middle of writing I thought this could be useful for someone else, so here's Tacky's general list of otome recs. It took me over an hour to write so I'm not proofreading it.

DS

Not much to say here because back in those days otome games didn't get localized. The stand outs are Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 1st Love Plus and Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 2nd Season, who have English fan translations. Slice of life games where you play as the protagonist through her three years of high school. And if you feel like a student-teacher romance that would make Sakura Kinomoto's mom proud, these are your games.

PSP

Still well into the no localizations era with one exception: Hakuouki Demon of the Fleeting Blossom. Not recommending it on PSP because there are better versions. Tokimeki Memorial Girl's Side 3rd Story Premium also has a fan translation and should be played over its DS counterpart because it has added functionalities. Sadly this time around the teacher is a secret character and a shota.

3DS

There's Hakuoki Memories of the Shinsengumi. Still not recommended because we can do better.

PS3

Hakuouki Stories of the Shinsengumi includes the original game and the fandisk with some neat animations added. This is the version to play if you want the original experience. If you want even more routes, go for another version.

Vita

Hakuoki Kyoto Winds and Edo Blossoms, Collar x Malice and Amnesia are the best games you can get for the Vita imo. Some people dig a lot the Psychedelica of the Ashen Hawk and Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly (I've only played BB, it was good but wasn't the best; wouldn't rate it as high as the others). There's Code Realize and its two fandisks (Future Blessings and Wintertide Miracles) and many people swear by them, but while I liked the common route in the first game, the rest didn't do it for me. You can find all of these except CxM and the CRs on Steam, and the Hakuoki games get dirst cheap on sale. Best bang for your buck of the saga. The CR games have PS4 ports and CxM has a Switch one, which you already know.

Switch

*rolls up sleeves* LET'S GO.

To get it out of the way: Hakuouki KW and EB are getting a Switch rerelease and a new translation and will be released as a single game, Hakuoki Chonicles of Wind and Blossom, on August 1st.

Collar x Malice fucking nails the mystery and lowkey horror vibes with and excellent plot that's interconnected in every route. CxM Unlimited is its fandisk and only recommended if you really have the CxM itch, because it's mostly fluff and the little plot there is is at most functional. It has a route where Ichika joins Adonis and you get to see its inner workings though. That was very interesting.

Bustafellows is 100% found family vibes with a very assertive protagonist. It's a mystery/action story and the team dynamics are sort of Ocean's 11-ish. Hilarious, heartbreaking at times, I've never felt more dread in a game than heading towards the basement in a certain's guy's route. There are two unlockable stories after you finish the routes of the guys, one of which I thought was glorious, another which sets up a sequel and is a big downer but I also really liked. It gets heavy at times with murder, suicide, sexual assault, human trafficking, among other kinds of violence, but despite it, it's generally a very funny and upbeat game. We're getting the sequel next year. Also available on PC.

Café Enchanté baits you with the premise of being a girl who manages a coffee shop patronized by handsome supernatural beings, so it's a real surprise when the cannibalism shows up. Anyway. Great game, but I'm afraid saying more would kind of defeat the point. Reminds me of Megami Tensei games, so if coffee shop AUs with supernatural world-ending threats are your thing, go for it. Just be warned that the fandom has kind of collectively agreed that poster boy's route never happened.

Birushana is a hidden gem that goes on sale super cheap and is also probably a hit or miss thing. You play as the legendary Yoshitsune, who in this game is a girl disguising her gender, but she's an amazing warrior as in history. It has the best otome couple I've ever seen, bar none, with Yoshitsune and Noritsune. The game is worth the price just to see them fall in love on the battlefield and watch Noritsune chug down Respect Women Juice all the way through it. The thing is... the rest of routes aren't great. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed how utterly unhinged they got at times, but the plot got worse as it deepened. Still. Noritsune. And I loved that most of the guys respected her as a warrior and were aware she was as capable or a better warrior than them and she didn't need a man to protect her. Very refreshing. One of my faves got done dirty by the translation because they started pulling lines out of thin air to make him creepier. Just him. Why. It's not like he needed the help.

Virche Evermore Error Salvation is also a good one if you can handle continuous drama and see egregiously bad science and say, "You know what? It's magic. Humans in this world are just built different." The worldbuilding is really interesting and the characters very enjoyable, though they don't feature a lot in each other's routes or aren't that friendly with each other. The continuous tragedy may tire you out, or maybe it'll work and emotionally destroy you. It didn't get any emotional reaction out of me until a certain point near the end, but I enjoyed the game a lot, nevertheless. We're getting the sequel this November and I'm really looking forward to it.

Variable Barricade: a fun romp where a young heiress has to chose a fiancé among the four disaster bachelors her grandpa has selected. It's not really similar to Ouran, but it reminded me a little of it at times. It's a pretty light game. The BFF is a gothic lolita otaku who has the time of her life shipping you with the guys, and the butler... oh boy the butler.

Amnesia, as I mentioned earlier, has a PC port as well as the Vita version, as well as two localized fandisks for the Switch (Amnesia x Crowd) that I can't speak of because I haven't played them yet. The protagonist has supernatural amnesia and must piece together her life while avoiding that other people realize she's lost her memory. It's a super intriguing game the first time you play, really nailed the being completely and utterly lost in the protagonist's shoes. A required play to get in on the cage jokes. It's sort of a rite of passage for otome gamers.

Jack Jeanne has probably the best group dynamics of any otome I've seen. I think some people have issues with the protagonist because they find her passive, but to me she felt the complete opposite. Everybody is adorable. A sentimental story of hard work, being young and and fighting for your dreams, 10/10, no notes. I lied, there's a note: Tanakamigi deserved a route! Where is our Tanakamigi route! щ(゜ロ゜щ)

Last but not least at all, the two Piofiores. Mafia games where all trigger warnings you can think of apply. Well, maybe not the cannibalism, that's still Café Enchanté's crowning glory. Fated Memories, the first one, has its ups and downs, but has very enjoyable characters, rock-solid worldbuilding, an amazing atmosphere set in 1920s Italy with a jazzy soundtrack that ends up living rent free in your brain. The last routes of the first game, Gil's and Finale, are worth the full price of the game alone. Piofiore Episodio 1926 is a masterpiece of the otome genre. It doesn't have a single boring route, and the final stretch (Advent Calendar-Alternativa-Secret Character route) has the best writing I've seen in an otome. Lots of points of view and situations interconnecting, an excellent final couple, top notch interactions between the main characters. Just the best.

[8bitsupervillain]

When the PS2 Mod of the 2009 Higurashi Cry Ch. 8 Matsuribayashi pt. 92

Matsuribayashi, as well as the rest of the series was ported over to various other consoles. The first seven chapters got ported to the PS2, PS3, PS4, PS Vita, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo Switch in addition to the PC originals. Matsuribayashi meanwhile was excluded from the PS2 release in favor of a different final chapter. Initially my intention was to give each of these console versions a try if only primarily to see what the difference might have been translation wise. Since these console ports never saw release outside of Japan they would invariably have to just be fan-translated, but alas I overestimated the lengths fan translators and the fandom would go to for the series. I don’t blame them, as you may have noticed Matsuribayashi is a beast and a half, I can only imagine how long the effort to translate the game would take. Looking at the release dates of the new translations on Steam and GOG there is roughly a year between releases, and that’s people whose job it is to translate all of this text. So I think it’s understandable that the fan who isn’t getting paid for their Herculean efforts might not want to bother, especially when there are at minimum two perfectly fine translations right there for you to enjoy on your computer. Because let’s be honest, you wouldn’t play the DS version of Higurashi on an actual DS, you’d emulate it.

One of the interesting things about the DS ports of Higurashi is how the game divvies up the actual gameplay. The characters and backgrounds are on the top (left) screen, and the dialogue is on the touch screen. Another fascinating thing it does is that it takes a page from the way the game Hotel Dusk handled its gameplay/dialogue by making you hold your DS sideways like a small book. You just tap on the screen to advance the plot, choose fragments in the Connecting Fragments, and so on. The other console versions I can only speculate on, as nowhere has the roms available, and a lack of translation made me feel like it was a moot point regardless.

To sate my curiosity I went and had a search around to see if anyone had made any sort of translation of the series back around 2004. Well before Matsuribayashi, sure, but you never know what a fan-translation of Onikakushi might yield. This too ended up cold, the earliest English translation of Higurashi I could find started with the MangaGamer efforts in 2009. That I could find anyway, perhaps there’s a fan-translation hiding out there somewhere that was made in 2005 or so.

One of the amusing things about the 2009 to 2010 MangaGamer translations, in addition to the fact you can’t get them officially any more, is the fact that most of ones that are available for the most part use the PS2 graphics.

Obviously I’m not going to do a complete playthrough of 2009 version of Matsuribayashi and post it here. As much as I’m sure you’d love to see another ninety parts. There will be posts about it sure, but it’s going to be some of the more important scenes as well as me mentioning minor translation differences between the versions.

I mentioned it way back towards the start of this chapter but I find it kind of interesting how each version of Matsuribayashi has its own variations on the names of the punishments the children at the orphanage get. You can sort of tell with the 2009 translation here this was meant to be a more literal translation of the source material, rather than something that tries to make it a more palatable read for Westerners.

Regardless the escape from the orphanage plays out similarly to the way it did earlier in the playthrough, only this time around the mysterious voice that communicates to Miyoko is missing. Thus making it seem even more like straightforward divine intervention led her to the phone booth.

I find that these scenes involving Takano talking about Irie behind his back are actually quite more venomous in tone than the way the later translations handle it. That’s actually something I couldn’t help but notice looking at the PS2 sprites in this version of the game compared to later variations, there’s a lot more angry or annoyed looks with the sprites. I don’t know why they redid them and removed them in the version that was used as the basis for the 07th-Mod, perhaps they somehow lost access to the PS2 versions of the games and just had to redo them.

Some small translation differences I noticed between the 2009 versions and the later 2015-2020 versions are somewhat minuscule. With the original translation they do the regular thing where the characters go Family name, Given name. Houjou Satoko, instead of Satoko Houjou for instance. But later translations flip them around, now this just comes down to personal preference, but I don’t particularly mind if they switch it to Satoko Houjou from Houjou Satoko. But having read and played thousands of Japanese games and so forth I’m kind of more used to the Last name First Name, naming scheme. It’s not the end of the world, and I don’t think it’s really worth making that much of a fuss over.

Also I mentioned I’m not doing another in-depth synopsis of the entire chapter again. But another difference between the 2009 and the current translations is they called it the Connecting Pieces section. They still refer to them as Fragments, but the name of the section was changed.

Another change was the name of the Mountain Dogs. In addition to being called the Mountain Hounds in the 2009 translation, later parts of the chapter gives the members of the Hounds names and not their bird-based callsigns. It doesn’t make much difference in the slightest, but it is in fact one.

There’s not much difference in the translation of this fragment. I don’t recall in the version I read the first time if she railed against the stupidity of the common man or not. I do know that she didn’t refer to him as Father Koizumi though, so that was an odd choice to go with originally.

The conversation with Nomura occurs more or less the same as it did in the 07th-Mod, there wasn’t any particularly noteworthy deviations in the translation. It’s slightly more stilted, the dialogue and text in the 2009 version of the game and I can see why they felt the need to give it another once over later on.

Something I find interesting about this variation of the conversation about Hanyu’s past is the fact that Rika says that she’s “still too young” compared to the later translations “she hasn’t had enough training.” It’s an interesting and deliberate change from the original translation.

Also you may or may not have noticed but they changed their spelling of Hanyu between versions, adding the extra U to her name in the newer translation. Something similar happens with Rena, they change it from Ryugu in the 2009 version to Ryuugu in the 2015+ translation. I don’t remember off hand if I had the presence of mind to screenshot them calling her Ryugu Rena in the PS2 version of the mod or not. Or if I caught any of the times Mion refers to herself as Uncle Mion instead of this old man.

There’s a part coming up when I talk about the anime adaptation of Matsuribayashi that throws some rather unnecessary confusion onto the matter about Hanyu and her people. Also the anime calls her Hanyuu. I’m trying to keep the spellings consistent with the version I’m presently talking about.

I don’t know why, but the "the" in front of Oyashiro-sama there just bugs me. This is from the scene where Akasaka, Ooishi, Kumagai, and the forensics scientist meet up, and Akasaka asks about the various deaths that occurred around Watanagashi.

I know it runs counter to the message of the chapter, but honestly just straight up killing Takano before Watanagashi would probably solve Rika’s problems.

I don’t think I screenshotted them in the PS2 version, but the 2009 version of Matsuribayashi lacks Ooishi’s distinctive laugh. It’s just a na ha ha ha, and not the nfu fu fu. I guess I should also point out that even though it’s a modded version of the 2009 original there is no voice acting with the PS2 sprites. I don’t know if that’s because there wasn’t any voice acting back then period, or if it was just they only ripped the sprites for the mod.

[grovelin-green-goblin]

Why Should we Play Glitchy Games?

How many times has this happened to you? You booted up a new game, you got it day one, and it has some glitches, and you aren’t too fond of the graphics, so, as such, you stop playing it and don’t really come back to it. You go back to whatever you were playing before and whenever your friends talk about it with you you always remark on how you couldn’t get past the way the graphics were. Some time passes, and you decide to watch a video on it, and you realize you missed out.

I think we’ve all been there, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of, lots of people judge books by their covers or just by the first few pages. But it doesn’t always have to be this way. Even if a game is unpolished, has poor graphics, or is glitchy, should stick with it. If not for just the sake of seeing what’s on the other side.

Talking about video games, it’s also easy to get caught up in the details. I’ve seen so much discourse about the graphics of games and how powerful the consoles are, it’s almost like the games themselves stop mattering at a certain point. It’s become more of “how close can we get to a movie without just making a movie?” Now, granted, multiple years during the Game Awards, Geoff Keighley and other speakers have spoken about how they hope to see video games get even closer to being like movies. While I’m all for advancements, and granted this is mostly from Playstation and Microsoft’s AAA output, they all play so close to one another, and if that’s not happening, Playstation is remaking The Last of Us again.

So, what’s the point? All these games look the same, and while there’s depth to them, but at the same time, there’s a lack of variety in the actual genres. So many of these games have become samey. There’s not enough variety, but with the actual content of the games, there’s not too much actually covered. So much of this has become a discussion of graphics and less about the games themselves. The discussion, and focus, should start to veer towards the actual content of these games, not just the performance and graphics.

Now, sometimes, the contents of the games aren’t completely polished, but I’ve seen so many stories of people playing these unpolished games and having a great time. A big example is Super Smash Bros. Melee, a game that has become renowned for its glitches such as the Wavedash and L-Canceling along with the roster’s unbalanced nature has made it an enduring classic for two decades, or Pokemon Red and Blue, games that, while a complete experience, are held together with duct tape and a dream, allowing for Arbitrary Code Execution, a way for people to make precise inputs, rewriting the game while the game is being played due to an insecurity in the game’s coding, allowing again for new discoveries to be made and be played for decades. So much so that people are still finding new techniques and the hierarchy of characters' competitive comparisons to one another to this day. Along with games that haven’t aged well or were unpolished, some games are made with glitches in mind, whether for comedy, like Goat Simulator, or simply that a glitch inspires a whole new concept. One of the most influential examples being Street Fighter II, where the designers found that different attacks had ending lags and could also be strung into each other, allowing for concept of combos to be born, and essentially creating the basis for all modern fighting games.

Now some may say that, no, playing unpolished games leaves you with a frustrating experience, with constant crashes and choppy, inconsistent frame rates. An example of this that I can think of is the Steam version of Fallout New Vegas, a game that, in general, is colloquially considered one of the best video games in the Fallout series, if not in its genre. But, due to the game not being developed for PCs first because it was first developed for the PS3 and Xbox 360, the game’s development being 18 months, and how old the game is, the Steam version is riddled with lots of bugs and frequently crashes. Despite this, however, the game still sits with an overall review average of “Very Positive” on its store page. Why is that? People found that, despite all the issues, players still love the game and found ways to not only work around the crashes, whether through toughing it out or modding the game to tighten up the experience, preventing these crashes from happening. This even happens now, with online games, like Fortnite and Fallout 76. These games, for as popular as they are, there’s always glitches that come with new additions and get fixed as they come, and they release with these glitches. People still play them. Even a game that came out three days ago, Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, has framerate drops and a strange lack of anti-aliasing, but guess what? I’m already halfway done with it, and I believe it’ll get fixed within time, whether as a patch or it was intended to work better on whatever this Switch successor will be. The point is, even if these games have these problems, a lot of the people who pull through usually end up at liking games like this.

Of course, this doesn’t work for consoles, but usually these don’t go that far as an issue.

All in all, even if the games aren’t polished or have glitches, it may still be worth it to play them. While, that doesn’t mean you can excuse extremely poor performances, you might find that you can still get enjoyment out of them, and can still be worth your time.

[khaoscontrol]

If your console isn’t on here and you aren’t sure what Generation it’s in, just comment and I’ll let you know!!

And please RB after voting for a bigger sample size :)

[enden-k]

I saw you mention Skyrim the other day in a post of yours and was curious about whether you had any in-universe OCs, AUs or anything like that for the Elder Scrolls universe, and if you'd be willing to share!

Sorry if this is weird or out of pocket or anything like that (or if the mention of skyrim was a goof of some kind that i missed) but it's been a special interest of mine for quite some time and it's neat to see folks in the same fandom circles that I am mention it outside of a meme context

ok ok im gonna ramble HAHAHA

when i played skyrim for first time it was years ago on ps3, just classic oldrim. when i got my pc years later i started w skyrim again and started modding and ughhhhh, basically turned my dragonborn into a really cool, pretty vampire w a bunch of customized followers and we just roamed the lands, doing quests and adventures and it was honestly sm fun!!!! i even started drawing abt them, i was just super immersed and it was a nice thing to focus on in that time. unfortunately smth broke my game iirc and in the end i had no choice but to delete everything and start again but i didnt get him right again and then just gave up. since i built a new pc that handles much much more now, i started ultramodding (again), trying to get him back akjscbkj

from all kinds of games i tried so far, skyrim is just still the perfect game in my eyes tbh. it was incredibly fun playing both vanilla and modding it later; it just gave me the chance to customize a game i greatly enjoy even more to my tastes (not to mention that despite its age, w all the hard work of the community it still can compete w modern games w all the graphic improving mods out etc)

yeah anw, i had a whole squad around my dragonborn, camping out in the night, watching stars, riding through the lands, doing quests together, had them all assigned roles, doodled abt them.....................im trying to get it all how it was but aughh

[tronarchive]

Greetings Programs!

I’m Rie-Eleven, the User of this project. I intend to keep a record of most, if not all, Tron media. I believe keeping archives like this is important, it’s always a tragedy when stuff becomes lost. I'm also working on a wordpress account (for those off of tumblr) and twitter account (just for update notifications, I promise).

This post will contain links to the post of each media as I research them. This will be a slow process, but I’m glad you’re here with me!

See that I’m missing something? Let me know and I’ll gladly look into it!

Videos

Tron (1982)

Tron: The Next Day

Tron Uprising

Tron Legacy

Books

Tron Novelization

The Making of Tron

Tron Pop-Up Book

Tron comic adaptation

Tron Ghost in the Machine

Tron Uprising Junior Novel

The Art of Tron Legacy

TL Junior Novelization

TL Betrayal

TL Complete Story

TL Movie Magazine

TL It’s Your Call

TL comic adaptation

Games

Tron Deadly Discs

Tron Maze-a-tron

Tron Solar Sailor

Adventures of Tron

Tron 2.0 (PC)

Tron 2.0 Killer App (Game-boy Advance)

Tron 2.0 Killer App (XBOX)

Tron Evolution Xbox (360/PS3)

Tron Evolution (PSP)

Tron Evolution (DS)

Tron Evolution Battle Grids (Wii)

Tron Run/r

Tron Identity

Featured In: Kingdom Hearts 2, KH DDD, Disney Heroes, Disney Mirrorverse

Arcade Cabinets: Tron, Discs of Tron

Soundtracks

Tron (1982)

Tron Legacy

Tron Legacy Reconfigured

Tron Uprising

Tron Run/r

Tron Identity

Tron Lightcycle Run: Shanghi, Disney World

Fanworks: End of Line, Return to the Grid, 8-bit Tribute

Misc.

Tron Lightcycle Run

Tron 1982 Trading Cards

Flynn Lives Campaign

[princehendir]

Was trying to explain this to my mom the other day but it's genuinely funny to me how fundamentally different of a video game playing experience I am having in comparison to my peers on the world wide web. Every one's constantly talking about mods and PC specifications and how to make your mods actually work and how to fix the launcher (still don't know what that is) and isn't this mod so cool and I bought a new graphics card and aaaas I gotta clear up some space because Smeegle Tower is updating anf the update is great but it's also 300kb. And it's like cool! Well I put my Fallout 3 disc that still has the Blockbuster barcode on it into my used ps3 last night, it started up immediately and I played it until it crashed and then I went to bed.