Also, don’t forget emulation! It’s an amazing retro gaming device.

Well, switch means easy PC play via Yuzu/Ryujinx!

I just couldn’t get into 16 at all, and this is from someone who loves everything right from the NES up to and including FF13 and 14.

Xenoblade has filled in the gap FF has left for me in many respects.

I played this on my M1 Macbook when I got it a couple of years back. I had a free 6 month trial of apple arcade and it included Fantasian

It was great, and the dioramas they built in real life then 3D scanned make for some really unique looking worlds

Only the Wii generation? You mean, for the past 22 years (as it includes the GameCube).

Me, with a mate a week ago on Resident Evil 5.

In what world would you expect it to NOT be compatible with Switch cartridges?

• Game Boy, Color, Advance - backwards compatible
• GameCube, Wii - backwards compatible
• Wii - Wii U - backwards compatible
• DS - DSi - 3DS - N3DS - backwards compatible

For all their faults, Nintendo have been strong with backwards compatibility for 30+ years, the only exceptions being the SNES (NES backwards compatibility existed initially but was dropped), N64 (fucking complex custom architecture and final cart based console) and Virtual Boy (lol)

This is 7 years now since the launch of the switch. That’s longer than the period between the NES western launch to the SNES 1985-1991, longer than SNES to the N64 (1991-1996), longer than the N64 to the GameCube (1996 - 2001), longer than GameCube to the Wii (2001 - 2006), Wii to Wii U ( 2006 to 2012) and Wii U to Switch (2012 - 2017)

The ONLY exception being the OG Gameboy to GBC, 9 years.

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EU commission, really. That’s the only way

That would be incredible

Spoken like someone who clearly doesn’t work in finance.

The numpad is essential for my work. You’re not seeing it from the perspective of myself who uses it as a calculator with automatic text entry while producing documents and estimations. That is my job, and it requires the numpad/calculator layout.

Dude, it literally took me two clicks from this post to get this:

“Time to re-experience this classic survival-horror game with Machine Learning upscaled backgrounds, seamless masks and many other small improvements in this all-in-one texture pack. Please note that RESHDP is a free fan project. Please check the FAQ before playing”

And it’s fucking superglued in. You have to use a heat gun to even have a chance of removing it, and Valve have acknowledged they may change it in the future as right now it is admittedly ridiculous.

So yes but technically no. It is not immediately user serviceable.

But enough talk!!! Have at you!

I’m reading this in professor Farnsworth’s voice. I’m not sure if that makes things better or worse

Ha, it wasn’t that bad when I went but it was during May! A day in luca (I think?) was the hottest day, and Florence was just eurgh.

Being a Brit, I naturally moan about the weather a lot. It’s a different kind of moan nowadays, as it now seems to be humid and uncomfortable more often than not.

It was 38°c the last time I went to Pisa (five years ago now, fuck) and that was utterly miserable at times. Can’t even begin to imagine 10°c on top of that.

An emulator that “performs poorly”?! Maybe if your PC sucks/is out of date.

I completed TOTK via Yuzu at a near locked 60fps, native 4k auto-HDR with reshade. This was on my HDTV with a pro controller.

If that’s poorly performing then I’m gandalf’s aunt

Edit: I have TOTK on the switch too. It is absolutely no comparison - the switch is at the point now where you absolutely get a better experience on PC than on the switch. Switch 2 plz, Nintendo.

I’m going to name a few potentially obscure ones from my 30 years of gaming

• Micro Machines 2 (SNES and Mega Drive) - as far as I am aware, only MM1 had wide release, the rest were PAL only but have modern 60hz and NTSC patches now. Great fun, and you can play as Violet Berlin (for those like me who used to watch Bad Influence!)

• Looney Toons Collector: Martian Alert!! (Game Boy Color) - this one is hard to categorise! Its a top down adventure RPG like Zelda, you start as Bugs and recruit further characters each with their own skills to traverse the world and solve puzzles. For example, Elmer Fudd has a gun, Tweety can fly over gaps, etc. It is actually really fucking good, and holds up better than many GBC games. You can also trade with other people who have the game, and there’s a sequel I haven’t even played yet!

• Wario Land Virtual Boy - this is without a doubt one of the best platformers ever made, and it’s a damn shame it’s been forgotten by most. HOWEVER! Emulators exist, and the game runs like a dream in retroarch/mednafen.

A few tips: the virtual boy is a 50hz console, so set your display to that or use gsync otherwise you’ll have stuttering. The console is also natively a wide-screen display, which is sweet. Steam Deck is perfect for it, and looks great in black and white. If you have a VR headset, that’s a good idea too to get the proper 3D experience, but it’s not essential in any way whatsoever.

• Neutopia II (PC Engine/TG16) - a shameless Zelda clone that is actually worth playing as a spiritual successor to Zelda 1. A neat little what if, if Nintendo had expanded on the original rather than Link to the Past. It has an awesome soundtrack, save battery backup (wahooo) and is just great fun. The first is good too, but feels significantly more dated than the sequel

And lastly, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch) - I don’t care if it’s the opposite of unknown, I’m recommending this one. Culmination of the best trilogy I’ve ever known in gaming, and by far the best game I’ve ever played. With the 4k, 60fps and rebalance mods when playing on PC it’s simply incredible. Based Monolithsoft.

The soundtrack is mind-blowing, has the best battle themes in the series and you can tell just how much work went into it (main two characters have flutes they use in the story to send dead soldiers to the afterlife - Yasunori Mitsuda then made those flutes for real to be used in the soundtrack). Just, every single thing about the game exudes more love and care than most games I’ve played and it shows. After so many years of being unable to finish a story due to corporate wankery (xenosaga…), Takahashi finally got to make his masterpiece. And for those who were put off by the anime-ness of Xenoblade 2, 3 is very much reined in, adult and pretty fucking dark. No big anime titties here - it’s war, and it’s not pleasant. It’s more like XB1 - 2 is the outlier, and its happy-go-lucky feeling makes far more sense after seeing what happens in 3.

I have a few. And I’m not even that old (mid thirties)

• People who talk on phone calls using airpods or similar look ridiculous in public, like they’re utter lunatics talking to themselves or their imaginary friend.

• people who view life through their mobile phones are unfortunate and sad. Like…why pay money to go see a gig if you’re going to view it through your phone screen? I went to a wedding last week and I was one of the very few who was actually watching the procession with my own eyes rather through a camera app.

• Not being on social media should be an accepted norm, not a fucking exception. This is an issue when dating, unbelievably.