The president is now repeating the deluded conspiracy that Biden died and was replaced by a robot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKGYARpb4jA

Biden was not replaced by a robot.  JFK was.  Get it right.

Alright, Biden DID get replaced by a soulless heartless thing, but that happened in January this year.  So, I guess this is another conservative accufession.

And unfortunately it's kind of a disaster.

So, on the positive side, Microsoft decided to add a new bonus for everyone subscribing to any tier of Game Pass for Xbox or PC, including the core tier that used to be Xbox Live Gold.  Given that the free games to keep (Games with Gold) went away and all you get now are a rotating set of titles you get access to through Game Pass, adding a new thing for subscribers is great.  Also, I love retro games of course as well as modern ones so this should be great.

The collection currently includes 63 games, all of them Sierra or Activision-connected classics mostly for the Atari 2600 or computers.  Yeah, Microsoft games aren't included, not yet, even though they did release a bunch of PC games in the '90s.  The most interesting lnclusions are MechWarrior 1 for SNES and MechWarrior 2 for PS1, the only games here for those consoles, because it suggests that Microsoft has gotten the mech rights for classic MechWarrior again and that's a fantastic sign!  Of course MechWarrior 2 for PC is the great all-time classic, not the PS1/Saturn version, but still that it was put here is great.  MW2 for PC is the best game developed by Activision.  The rest of the library are, as mentioned, a bunch of Activision games for the Atari 2600 and a bunch of Sierra adventure games (plus Caesar II) for the PC or Amiga.  It includes a lot of games I love -- Quest for Glory 1, Megamania, Enduro, Caesar II, and more.

Plus, Challenges have been added, which are pretty cool.  These give you some specific challenge within the game for a high score competition, and the collection has an online high score table.  One example is an Enduro challenge where you go maximum speed all the time and have to see how far you can get.  It's hard but fun.

That all sounds good, it's a good selection of classic games, right?  So, why is it a disaster?  And it very much is a disaster, to the point of being kind of unplayable...

Because it's not a local collection.  It's all streamed via a partnership with Antstream Arcade, a UK-based streamed retro games service.  Yes, in order to play Atari 2600 games on your Xbox Series X, you ... need to stream them over the internet, with regular connection problems interrupting play.  Yeah, games do NOT play entirely smoothly, not even close.  That's just ludicrous!  I kind of understand streaming the more complex PC games because emulating them would take a little effort, though it's surely doable with dramatically better performance than you get from the barely playable state of streamed Caesar II on XSX as it is (the audio is awful, the controls extremely hard to use on gamepad due to awful stick sensitivity...), but ATARI 2600 GAMES need to be streamed?  And the streaming performance isn't even all that good?  That is just unacceptable.

For example, in my high score book from whenever I last played the game years back, it says my best score in Megamania is 101,000.  I doubt I'd get that score now on real hardware though I should try to see, but I can sure say that it'd be a lot better than the like 10,000 best score I've managed on the streamed version here.  There's so much chopping and hitching, it's beyond unacceptable.

So uh, nice try Microsoft but this must be rethought as something playable locally and not streamed.  There is a reason why streamed services haven't caught on and this is one example of why.

Cursed show. And not in a good way. Strap yourselves in for a wholly esoteric topic that like 200 people across the globe care about.



Look at this 90s sitcom slop. Fred Gwynne (the first Herman Munster) left pretty damn big shoes to fill and this twerp couldn't even climb inside one of them, not even if he had a ladder and grappling hook and... well, you get the idea. That grating voice, ugghh. Gwyneth was a loveable doofus. This guy is just insufferable.

I'd rather watch the recent Rob Zombie movie adaptation. I don't have high hopes for quality exactly, but at least he loved the original and presumably put some passion into it. I think it would at least be interesting. This is just a sad cash-in. Absolutely grotesque and again, not in a good way.

Metroid NES has aged like ass. No angled aiming, can't even KNEEL and shoot, no maps. Then you're in Norfair where every room is identical to three rooms ago. And talk about being stingy with energy. 5 units at a time, all you have to do is kill seven enemies or so before they drop one. Enjoy, don't get your ass kicked all in one place!

I could deal with the difficulty but man this game is grim. Don't know if I can push myself through it.

On the other hand, Zero Mission swooped in and did it justice by adding all of the above necessary QoL improvements. I don't know how they can rightfully call it a remake. Even the map is different.

NES:


Zero Mission:


Like look at this shit. What in god's name are they talking about? The only commonalities between this and its predecessor are things you find in every metroid game: morph ball, bombs, missiles... it's its own goddamn Metroid game, not a remake of one. Don't sell it short.

This isn't how you market things. This must have been intended for something else. Maybe Nintendo felt collective shame that one of their most beloved franchises had a rough beginning. And they wanted to honor the late Gunpei Yokoi's spirit by perfecting his creation. How I, myself, would react to a person honoring my name by making a newer, better version of my creation that shits all over the original, I guess I don't know. Seems kind of passive aggressive.

https://homestarrunner.com/toons/backtoawebsite

Yep, I'm going old school and linking to this OUTSIDE of Youtube!

Is that even allowed?!

Well, it better be, because it's about time we started our underground movement.

Hey remember when tendocity was directly linked from Nintendo's own web page, back when community actually mattered to them?  That's how I found this place back when I was trying to get some tips on how to beat a Goldeneye level or two!

In the first five seconds you see blocks merging to form a sphere so I'm calling it now, Tetrisphere 2 confirmed, day 1, I get your dollars for that one.

Actually Nintendo does, because second thing we confirm is that the US version will cost $120 more than the Japanese version.  Thank you you tangerine nightmare!

Open World Mario Kart (and that one's not even a joke, that's a thing they are doing apparently).  So like, they BETTER have a full story mode like we've been wanting Mario Kart games to get ever since Diddy Kong Racing and Crash Team Racing showed just how amazing a cart racer's single player mode could actually be.

Oh and we got them making a HUGE deal about these... "virtual cards".  It's basically Steam family sharing, but more limited.

Also, confirmed that a number of games won't actually have all the game on the carts.  Physical is pointless confirmed!

Backwards compatibility is roughly where we expected it to be, with the main "broken" games being the ones that relied on certain controller functions the new system doesn't have, like LABO cardbordium stuff.  Expected, so hold onto that hacked Switch 1 of your's.  Also, they're testing the 15,000 games on that system to have a full list of what works and what doesn't.  First party's already done, so now they just have to test the absolutely flood of asset flip slop they allowed onto their store without ANY vetting process at all, hence the straight up porno games on Nintendo's family friendly console.

There's a small handful of confirmed patches to add Switch 2 enhancements to select Switch 1 games.  Link's Awakening is on that list.  It'll get a smooth frame rate, and MAYBE let us turn off the danged screen edge blur effect.  Not confirmed, as what new features they're patching in will vary from game to game.  I just wonder if there's a universal "accelerated" mode you can just toggle on like what the PS4 Pro/PS5/PS5 Pro has, to speed things up without needing patches necessarily.

Anyway, clickety widget, they got voice chat!  It's a brand new ancient feature from the original XBox finally properly integrated into the Switch!  Finally, you can listen to 8 year olds call you the N word because you didn't pick the right team character!  It's also using SD Express, for MUCH much faster access times within at least a ballpark range of M.2 drives in modern consoles and PCs.  I expect it'll probably require SD express cards too as the games will be designed expecting those kinds of load times.

They got Gamecube Classics coming now too!  Which, alright they'll let you rent Gamecube games, but they STILL won't let you buy their retro catalog any more!

Anyway, from From, we got Not Bloodborne!  I'm sure it'll be amazing, but I think they're going to defy expectations by making it NOT open world and instead going back to that tightly woven style like Dark Souls and Bloodborne did so well.  Exclusive to Switch for maybe a year before we get an improved version on PC and that'll be the one you really want.

DONKEY KONG BANANZA!  They're doing the Sonic Generations thing with some 3D sections and some 2D sections, so as one of the only two people in this entire world that loved DK64 (the other one being a lego piece), I'm sure I'll love this game.

Anyway, no Mach Rider sequel so terrible direct, worst ever.

Didn't know the site was down. Backup now.

Well the Switch 2 "announcement" trailer hit, and what have we learned?  Nothing really.  But, here's a version I think is more entertaining:



It sure is slightly different!

So, as a short recap of what's been going on, the Republican Party is a clown's kingdom from top to bottom, and yet it is the Democrats who end up wearing pie. You might be asking yourself, what year is it? Is it 2010 and we're talking about the Democrats letting the Tea Party curb stomp Hope and Change before it is able to even walk? Is it 2014, and we're talking about the Democrats learning, to their evident surprise, that Obama's re-election was no more a national mandate on Democratic politics than was his first win? Is it 2016, and we're talking about how the absolutely unstoppable Death Star managed to blow itself up just as it was about to wipe out those pesky rebels once and for all? 

Haha no, nothing may have changed whatsoever about the ineptitude, arrogance, and blindness of the Democratic Party, or their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or their laser focus on squandering of whatever gains they actually do realize. However, it is, in fact, a different year on the calendar, and it is a new episode of let's be sad and argue about it. 

On today's episode, Donald Trump, at his weakest, oldest, and most pressured, managed to win a clear, undeniable victory over the forces of good. It was the most decisive outcome of his three campaigns. We join each other, with a lot of questions to ask ourselves.

Is the United States dominated socially, economically, and politically by racist morons, and should we apply that label to everyone who ever voted for Trump until they see the error of their ways and learn to vote correctly?
Did the Democratic Party seriously torpedo its own credibility and lose 20 million voters, or did those 20 million voters owe their votes to the Democratic Party, and should we focus on blaming and shaming them until they vote correctly with more consistently? 
Why did all those idiots vote for Trump because of the economy? Couldn't they see how good the economy is? Are they stupid?
Is it because Kamala Harris was a woman, or because she was a black woman? 
Was it even really as bad as it looks, since we did make a few marginal gains here and there? 


These debates, and more, on the 2024-28 episode of the traditional politics megathread