#i sorta knew it would be unplayable

[composing-the-future]

i am in canada rn and i tried playing league. I uh i loaded into an aram playing bard. i had 330 ping. and then computer crashed

[necromancy-enthusiast]

in what ways is the 3ds better friend

Oh boy anon, I am so happy you asked, because the 3ds rivals the playstation 2 as my favorite video games console, so buckle in, because I have Many Thoughts about this. The switch, as I’m sure you know, has been an incredible success. Nintendo learned from the mistakes they made with the wii u, and they’ve been raking the money in ever since. But like I said before, which I imagine is what prompted you to ask this question in the first place, is that once you get past the novelty of the switch, it feels underwhelming. I primarily play it in handheld mode so my opinion is colored by that, but the thing is, it's supposed to be both a home console and a handheld console, and theoretically it's supposed to perform at least to generally equal standards. But it doesn't.

The original switch's battery life is garbage, and there's a huge downgrade in graphic fidelity between TVs and the switch's native screen. I'm by no means one of those people who thinks anything that isn't absolutely cutting edge is A Sin Against Viddy Gaems, and yeah I also get there's bound to be some downgrade, but I think that games shouldn't play like powerpoint presentation slides in handheld mode, I think that's a reasonable thing to ask. From what I've gathered this has been improved in the switch lite and oled versions, so I'll give them that, but the thing is that these deficits suggest that the ‘handheld’ mode was more of a sloppy after-thought than anything, sorta like an ‘just shove it on there we’ll deal with the problems later once everyone’s already bought one so it’ll incentivize them to buy the new upgraded version’ thing.

As long as we’re talking about hardware issues though, one thing I think is totally inexcusable is the problem with the switch joycon drift. That wasn't an honest mistake, Nintendo knew about this problem long before the switch came out. Originally they wouldn't even repair joycons out of warranty, but people made enough of a fuss about it that they started to. Apparently, with the switch oled they’ve ‘improved’ the joycons.

Note the term ‘improved’. Not ‘fixed’. ‘Improved’. Meaning that even 6 years after it launched, people are buying brand new switches and getting joycon drift. That’s total bullshit. I’ve heard people try to excuse these issues by saying ‘it’s wear and tear, of course it’s going to degrade after a lot of use’, which is also utter bullshit. How do I know that?

The oldest Nintendo console I have is an N64 that I basically inherited from my older siblings (lol I’m kinda the collection keeper nowadays). Now the N64 is uh… It has a weird controller that has awkward movement controls. But it still works just like it always did despite being over 20 years old. My ps2 is also over 20 years old and trust me, it has seen A LOT of use, but the original controller it came with and the extra I got a few years later also work just as good as new. So why does Nintendo suddenly get to pull the ‘wear and tear’ excuse when they’ve proven they and other video game companies can make durable controllers in the past?

I can’t really think of another video game console that has so consistently had such long reaching hardware problems, and not just little problems, problems that make some games basically unplayable (lol just try playing the game Card Shark on the switch with a drifting joycon, it’s not very fun), but Nintendo gets away with it because they’re Nintendo, and because the switch was their comeback. People love underdog stories, so that plus Nintendo’s brand loyalty (that Sony and Microsoft would probably put out a hit on someone to achieve for themselves, if it were only so simple) has made people feel lenient towards them…

But that good will and grace that Nintendo garners from many of its fans is wearing thin, which I think is fantastic because at the end of the day, Nintendo is another company that wants to make as much money as possible, and it should be held to much, much harsher standards! Especially since it’s a multi-million dollar company! But that’s another topic.

Another thing that has really started bugging me after I started messing around on my n3ds again is that the sheer amount of customizability in the 3ds absolutely puts the switch to shame. The switch has virtually nothing. You can mostly just change between the UI being black or white. But the 3ds has themes and folders you can organize your games in (or you can just have them all show on the main screen so you don't forget you have them, like I do with the switch -_-). They also have badges! Admittedly you get them through the badge arcade game, which is a 'free to start' game that tries to get you to pay real money, but you can easily get a lot of good stuff for free anyway.

I wouldn’t say this next part is bad, but it does indicate a change in Nintendo’s strategy and how that was likely influenced by their financial situation. The switch has a lot of ports. A lot of them. Like I said, this isn’t bad in and of itself, those games become easier for people to access in an easy, legitimate manner. But why would they suddenly change this? Traditionally Nintendo has been very picky about what it chooses to port, but nowadays the switch eshop is absolutely flooded with games of varying quality. It’s nowhere as near as bad as steam’s ‘quality control’ issues, but like I said, it just points to Nintendo’s underlying problems.

I’m not saying the 3ds didn’t have problems. Apparently when it first launched some people got headaches when they played with the 3d effect on, but given how a handheld console projecting 3d graphics like that was a brand new thing and how they actually seriously improved that (and how it’s totally optional anyway, it’s not necessary to the experience like oh I don’t know, the damn controllers of a home console), I think it’s more reasonable, and its launch titles were underwhelming (except Samurai Warriors Chronicles, God I love me a good Samurai Warriors, but admittedly it ran kinda eeehhh on the original 3ds, but the n3ds is much smoother).

Still, the 3ds is indicative of a time when Nintendo was flush with money and success from the wii/ds era in the 00s. The switch is indicative of when they were hemorrhaging money due to the wii u's failure and the 3ds' rocky start in the early-mid 10s. Marketing the switch as an all-in-one console was pretty smart, because I'm 99% sure they made that choice so they wouldn't have to split resources and money on developing two separate systems like they were generally expected to, since at this point Nintendo has practically cornered the market on traditional handheld game consoles. But it's clear the handheld part was tacked on and not given much thought, and that the whole process was rushed and occurred in a time of financial desperation.

[thegeminisage]

9 14 19 27 39 41 69 70

pls you sent me so many thank u ilu

9. Most regrettable purchase?

it’s a tie between 1. the white knight chronicle games & 2. the tron legacy video game - but for very different reasons. i LOOOVED white knight chronicles and the online play was PERFECT it was like not a full mmo so not #cursed (sorry mmo players but dont boo me for being right) so it was really great to play with my pal @skillethelm but then RIGHT after i got into it they SHUT THE SERVERS DOWN and so like i wasn’t allowed to sort of move on naturally and i always feel really bitter and resentful when i think of it. the tron video game, on the other hand, was just super awful. unplayable. i tried real hard to like it bc i love the movie more dearly than any other movie on god’s green earth but…i couldn’t. im sorry sam flynn

14. Favorite game music?

all of it? there are games i have played JUST BECAUSE the soundtracks were so good i couldn’t stop listening and i got curious - these include chrono trigger, ff6, UT, and mirror’s edge (kinda). like, my favorite of all time will always be zelda music, & my favorite zelda track is oot’s title screen theme, but like…i just fucking love game music man. i love sonic’s buttrock and dragon age’s elven emo pop and zelda’s grand orchestrations and ff13′s/mirror’s edge smooth synth-y stuff and all the catchy tunes of Ye Olde Game Era and dishonored’s  goth harpsichord steampunk shit…like i could never really TRULY pick - actually the very first time i ever used a computer it was to visit websites about zelda and listen to the music online - and before that i used to run chrono cross and kingdom hearts on the title screens/opening cinematics for hours just to listen, like before i really knew there was like, online music. man. so much. i love everything

19. Favorite handheld console?

gameboy advance sp, hands down. gameboy advance had the best/most games that i love, could also play regular gameboy games, and the sp had a BACKLIGHT so you could play in the dark. i used to play the original tetris every night to fall asleep on mine. 3DS is a close runner up but you just can’t fit that thing in your pocket the way you can an SP

27. Game that makes you rage?

i fuckin hate super smash bros melee. YEAH I SAID IT LOL like… ok everyone says it’s sooo good and they RUINED smash after that but like, i main pikachu? and they nerfed the FUCK out of pikachu in melee. so i could never win. and it was a horrible teenhood i had growing up playing that shit. brawl was like ten zillion times better. i still lost a lot but i was because i sucked not because the game sucked. melee worshippers can kiss my ass

also, as i was recently reminded, the fight sections of mirror’s edge. fucking bullshit

and a special award to life is strange for having the WORST ending to a NEARLY PERFECT GAME of ALL TIME

39. A sequel that you would die for them to make?

UNDERTA– no sorry. sorry. sorry i’m not gonna say it

ok uhhhhh honestly? my main answer is: any zelda sequel. like all the games take place hundreds or thousands of years apart with different characters and timelines…save for like the oracle games, mm & oot, and then like TECHNICALLY phantom hourglass…i would really just like to see an honest to god sequel in the same continuity. more throwbacks. i lost every bit of my shit when [someone from skyward sword] sorta-kinda made a cameo in botw. it’s everything i want

my other answer is: golden sun 4. we had to wait a literal decade for golden sun 3 and then it ENDS ON A CLIFFHANGER ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? im still lowkey mad abt it. idk if it’ll EVER happen

41. A genre that you just can’t get into?

i’m actually pretty flexible when it comes to genre? i’ve tried & liked: platformers, adventure games, open world, dating sims, stealth, shooters, QTEs, RPGs, racing, music/beat timing, whatever the hell genre animal crossing and harvest moon are…but like the one thing. i cannot do. is real-time strategy. it’s just too boring rip

also, i dislike playing online against other people bc they are usually jerks lol

69. In your opinion, best game ever made? 

that’s such a hard one!! it’d be easy to say ocarina of time because it holds such a special place in my heart, but just because it’s special doesn’t mean it’s the most fun or satisfying to play. the best game EVER made would have to have it all - great gameplay, a good amount of story that isn’t too sparse, a catchy and memorable soundtrack, lovable characters, lots and lots of replay value, and excel in online/dlc if that’s a thing, good voice acting/graphics if that’s a thing, no ragequit sections…like i could easily just name the zelda game that comes closest but i wanna be as objective as possible here…

ok i’m gonna go with two categories - 2D games & 3D games - bc they are such different beasts

for 2D im gonna have to say chrono trigger…some places are really frutstratingly hard, but not ragequit hard, and level grinding can be a BIT repetitive but the story, characters, cast, & music are all top notch, and with all the different endings + new game plus you could play it over and over and still have things to do

then for 3D…mmmm see this is hard because like nothing meets ALL of those requirements…portal 2 and okami both have very satisfying stories and wonderfully addicting gameplay that varies up often, but not a lot of replay value…breath of the wild and dragon age inquisition both have amazing story/gameplay balance and near-infinite replay value, but i have a few major nitpicks with both stories, and none of the games i mentioned have online play. i think in the end my nitpicks with zelda’s story and direction are pretty minimal + i have a personal loyalty to the series, so i’d go with breath of the wild.

70. Very first game you ever beat? 

you know, i actually can’t remember for sure! i suspect it was either majora’s mask or link’s awakening - funnily enough it was years before i first beat ocarina on my own.

[chuck-e-cheese-anime-faces]

weird dream and real-life connection

this morning, after i went to sleep after having woken up a bit before, i had this weirdly realistic dream where me and my family went to this laundromat sometime in late afternoon for some reason, and they had a bunch of arcade cabinets there. they looked like sega astro city cabinets, 

but had no markings anywhere, just completely white, no marquee panels either, the screen was tilted further backwards, and the controls must’ve been a bit higher up because i played on them easily while standing up. the cabinets were always next to other washing machines, even the ones that covered the walls, making it look like the cabinets were coming out of the walls just like the washing machines, in fact, the washing machines and the cabinets looked pretty damn similar because they were both the same porcelain white color. many of the cabinets happened to have millipede or centipede on them, though i think most, if not all of those cabinets were millipede (i didn’t really check every cabinet but i think all the ones i did firmly recognize were millipedes) and a lot of the millipede games had differing static color schemes on them, unlike the normal game where the color scheme is dynamic throughout the game itself. and i was looking around at some of the cabinets and found a dig dug one. 

I tried to play it but i noticed that the game had been custom-hacked somehow so that there was already a lot of dark “dug” space around dig dug immediately when you start the game, before you even get digging. I somehow knew this is what made the game really glitchy and almost unplayable; for some reason, the more you walked around, the more you would sorta, like, teleport in front of yourself??? like, as you walked, for like, every other frame of walking, you would teleport a bit in front of yourself but you’d go back to your original place whenever you stopped, and the more you walked around, the further you would teleport from yourself every other frame, even after stopping (holy shit now that i’m really thinking about it, this MAY be a possible glitch, like what if part of the game recognized that you were in open space(the part “teleporting” you forward every other frame, because Dug moves slightly quicker in open space) and another part recognized that there should be dirt there (the part “putting you back” because Dug moves slower when digging the dirt) that’s fucking tightass logic, ESPECIALLY for one of my dreams) this happened with the enemies too, but to a lesser extent i think. 

another game they had was the same shape and size and color and everything as all of the other cabinets, but was a coin pusher type of machine 

(this kind of machine:

)

Anyways, the inside of it was completely white again, it was smaller than the one in this pic, and to push the coins n shit, it just had a shiny metal train to push them

think of this train, but longer, wider, without the nub on the front, and in shiny pink gold:

it would come from the back left corner and bend forward and the trapezoid thing on its front would push whatever coins n shit were in the way down into the...uh... “trough�� or whatever the fuck its called. there weren’t TOO many coins in it, just a lot in front of the train, and the train wasn’t even wide enough to potentially push all the tokens on the platform. anyways my dad played it and the train pushed all the shit in front of it, a bunch of what looked to be quarters or nickels and 2 or 3 pieces of a collectible trading card of some sort that had been split into a few pieces, and i think there were other trading cards torn up like that too in there. I looked at the coins and saw they were actually tokens for what looked to be a sorta western-themed place, when i thought they were those quarters with like, specific areas in the U.S. and state monuments on them n shit. I don’t remember what was on the torn trading card but i Remember it was white, and two of the pieces that came out went together and i believe they were part of the lower right corner of the card and the card was meant to be held horizontally. i think there was another piece of the same card, but it didn’t fit with the other 2.

 while looking at the coins, i realize there is another cabinet acorss this one with a game on it that i must have dreamt that i seen gameplay of it on youtube or something because it wasnt a game i played before but i recognized it. I remember seeing a simple cowboy or farmer moving around a lil on a 2d plane with a cow and a piece of a brown fence. the back was light brown and the cowboy/farmer and cow were a bit darker brown, but not as dark as the fence. When i noticed this in conjunction with the western coins, i thought the western-themed place the coins were from was actually just this laundromat, even though this western game was really one of the only distinctly “western” things about this place. I tried to remember the game’s name in my dream, I knew it was a sort-of western name starting with a “B”, so I’ll just say it was probably called “Bonanza” or something, even though i don’t remember if i remembered the name in my dream or if that was even the right name had i did remember it. 

Lastly i looked at one of the millipede cabinets that was a couple washing machines to the left and noticed this one had a brown color scheme kinda like Bonanza, and the game had been modded again, but this time, there was a lot of light brown space filling the black space and i couldn’t move or shoot through it, though i think i could shoot some of it to destroy it. this machine i got a very good look at, i remember vividly the shape of the mushrooms, which were what told me that this was millipede and not centipede, and i remember seeing the screen and noticing it was very modern by its luminescence and the uh, scanlines, or lack thereof?? but anyways, i could tell that it had the same kind of monitor a lot of modern multi-cade units have. shortly after playing this game for a bit (which feltreally damn realistic in my dream, with pushin the button and movin the trackball and all, also sidenote i think i mightve used a trackball on dig dug as well!) i woke up. Right after i felt this dream was not like the normal dreams i have, everything was really normal and realistic, and my perspective of reality wasn’t getting fucked around, probly cause i was only playing simple arcade games and not watching movies or tv shows, which normally screw with my perception in these dreams in really cool and fun ways. 

but anyways, heres the real life connection: later today me n my family went to a mexican place called “Mi Casa” to eat cause they had some kinda fundraiser going on, and on the way out i noticed they had a multi-cade tabletop cabinet by the door! it had the same kind of screen as the millipede in my dream and it even had included dig dug and centipede (dont remember exactly if it had millipede) on it as well, but the best part was that this shit was fuckin freeplay!!

I started playin 1942 on it but i remembered that game has some silly ass controls cause i couldnt move diagonally, but anyways that was really weird to see an arcade unit with dig dug and centipede(and probly millipede) with that exact kind of screen on it the day of that specific, weirdly realistic dream!! one of these im goin back there just to play dig dug and maybe centipede/millipede though i prefer to play those with trackball and that cabinet’s only got joysticks.

Once i do lucid dreaming i hope to visit this place again, along with other places, with susie! anyway, i think i’m off 2 bed soon seyall!