Now, I have always said that Mr. Rogers Neighborhood is the best childrens' television show ever. The best thing about the show has to be his message that everyone is best just the way they are, and he is famous for that message. Almost as important, however, is the shows' focus, or rather, the absence of the constant barrage of thirty second long scenes; instead, each episode has only two major parts, in his house and in the land of make-believe. As a kid I liked the longer-form nature of Mr. Rogers over Sesame Street's short, constantly changing scenes. The calmer tone of Mr. Rogers is great too, I really like it; not being another one of those kids shows that is a 'barrage on the senses' was one of Fred Rogers' major aims with the show, and I at least always liked it more for that. Of course Mr. Rogers' way of speaking straight to the audience is the most important part of what makes it so great, but the tone and longer story arcs, often even with stories that continue through multiple episodes, is fantastic as well.
So, you may have heard of this, but previously Twitch streamed all of Bob Ross (painting) and Julia Child (cooking) shows, those classic PBS hits. I didn't watch much of either, but it was an interesting thing to do. They are following those with this, a run through the entire well over 800 episode run of Mr. Rogers episodes. It started on the 15th at noon (PST), so now it is in the middle of the very long first season -- looking it up, the first season, which is from 1968, is a whole 130 episodes, and is in black and white. Most of these first-season episodes have never been reran since they aired once in 1968, so only people watching then saw them. So yeah, I've been watching a bunch of this, and it's great stuff, different because it's in B&W and is older than the episodes I remember as a kid, but it's also so familiar because the show is what it is, it didn't change much. It's awesome. The songs are even charming, and I am not exactly a fan of music.
(The first season, from 1968, is 130 episodes, all black and white and not rerun. Then season 2 through 9, from '69 to '75, are about 65 episodes per season, and are all in color. Then there were no new episodes, only reruns, for over three years. When it returned in 1979, for the second series that ran 22 seasons until ending in 2001, the number of episodes dropped to only 10-20 per season most of the time, so that shorter first series ended up producing far more episodes than the longer second one. Huh.)
... Now, on the one hand, you've got this incredible childrens' show, with lots of not-seen-in-49-years episodes on right now (and for the next day or two as well)... and on the other hand
you've got it on Twitch, representing the internet, with its often-toxic comments bar scrolling by on the right. It's a pretty weird mix. The internet is both one of the best things ever and one of the worst things ever, depending on when and where you look... but it's very much worth watching anyway, just ignore a lot of that chat stuff.
Yes, tired old line for the subject, but I couldn't fit my actual thought in there.
Frankly, I think the temple Indy stole that shiny trinket from in the beginning of the first movie was the more valuable item. That place had some incredible feats of engineering, and Indy broke basically all of them just to get some stupid chunk of treasure that wasn't even made out of magic like the rest of the things Indy steals.
Looks like the author, who never once intended for this cartoon to represent racists, finally decided to just kill off this character for good. I mean, imagine if Samus became some sort of symbol of hatred tomorrow on the same scale as Pepe. Samus may be popular to gamers, but she's still JUST enough of an unknown to the public at large that for most people, her only identity would be as a hate speech icon, and Nintendo might have no choice but to end the Metroid series for good.
This really has to suck for this artist, but I respect the decision, since his own character is now poison for him to use. Too bad it won't do anything. That frog symbol is going to continue to be used by racists long after the character's "death". Basically, all this means is that the character is now JUST a hate symbol, and can be treated as such.
Financially perhaps I shouldn't have, but they had a used Zelda-themed Wii U, the one with Zelda art on it that I believe they released for WW HD, for only $160... and I got it. It came with the system and all accessories, I believe, unless the Wii U came with a sensor bar stand or system manual -- it didn't have those. It did have the system (32GB, and reset, so there was nothing on it), tablet (with the neat Zelda graphics on it, but a replacement touchpen), two curved things that serve as a system stand, system and tablet chargers, and powered and not powered system stands.
That price is pretty good for the Zelda edition, which costs over $160 on ebay. It's still expensive, but Wii Us have not gone down in price at all over the past few months even though the Switch is a hit; I was wondering if it would, but so far nope. As I've said before I've been quite conflicted about the Wii U v. Switch, as the Switch is something I certainly want and is selling great... but it would be a shame to never get a Wii U, and there isn't much software for the Switch yet for sure, so I'll get it sometime later. (Now, I would not have gotten a Switch now, I still haven't seen one and that'd cost twice as much as this did. But still I wouldn't get both close together, of course.)
I already had four Wii U games:
physical discs:
Disney Infinity 2.0 - I got this for the figures and stuff a few months ago, because it was quite cheap. Seems like a not-great port.
Rodea the Sky Soldier - This I got new when it came out because it came with the original Wii version in the package too. That is the original game and is by all accounts better than this 3DS version up-port, but it's nice to have I guess?
digital (from a Humble Nintendo Bundle I got last year):
Shantae and the Pirate's Curse - good platformer I've played on 3DS, so I doubt I'll replay it.
Affordable Space Adventures - This is a good indie game that uses the Wii U tablet fairly well. I'm liking it.
I didn't buy any games at the store I got the system from, but I did get a few more yesterday from some Gamestops (physical copies of course, all complete with case and such):
Super Mario 3D World - $18
Xenoblade Chronicles X - $25
Zombi U - $5
Star Fox Guard - $3
Nintendo Land - $3
(No, I haven't gotten the Wii U version of Mario Maker yet. I definitely will, based on the 3DS version I have it probably is one of the best games ever, but 3D World is pretty fantastic too and I want to play it first... and it costs a lot less than Mario Maker does.)
Now, even though 3D Land was one of the earlier 3DS games I got after I got the system back in fall 2015, but I didn't get all that far into it. It seems good as I said, though I thought that the 3DS version of Sonic Lost Worlds is just as good. This time though, while I only played the demo of Wii U Sonic Lost Worlds (and I know it also has a PC version, but I don't have it), Mario 3D World is better... though Sonic Lost Worlds looks pretty good too and I'll definitely need to get it. Anyway, comparing 3D World versus 3D Land, I'm liking it a lot more than that one; 3D Land is good, but this is great. I'd say it does four things better, and one worse -- better, the graphics are better, there are more levels, there are playable female characters (and indeed, playable characters other than just Mario), and such. On the other hand, the game isn't in stereoscopic 3d so, because it also has an isometric perspective most of the time, some jumps are harder to discern. But yeah, I finished world 1 and the game is great, maybe really great. For a system with a relatively short life, the Wii U does have a great (first-party) software library, in the platformer genre especially. It doesn't have a great, big open-world 3d platformer in the Mario 64 vein, I don't think, it just missed the comeback of that genre this year (Yooka-Laylee, Mario Odyssey, and such.), but other platformer genres are clearly very well represented here, and that's one major reason why I got the system -- I doubt that they'll all get 3DS or Switch ports. And on that note, Donkey Kong Country Returns Tropical Freeze will probably be one of my next pickups for this system. (The original DKCR is probably the best 2d or 2.5d platformer on the Wii...)
Anyway, the other game I spent some time with is Xenoblade Chronicles X, which some hours in I finally got to the main game of. It seems good, though it reminds me of that usual thing I notice with anime, that anime fantasy and anime sci-fi are so similar that you sometimes can't even tell the difference... because yeah, this game is more sci-fi than the first Xenoblade (or the Switch game, which goes back to fantasy), but anime fantasy has so much sci-fi in it that there is much less of a difference than you would get from Western games. Like the first game the auto-combat and skill system are very MMO-like, but that can be fun so it works. I can see the game getting repetitive, but the graphics are great and gameplay can be fun so so far I mostly like it.
As for the system itself, hmm... well, first, the tablet. Putting a map on the tablet may be one of the most common uses of the thing, but it's a good idea which makes ingame maps easier to use, as you see in Xenoblade Chronicles X. Having two screens is great for some kinds of games, as you see on the DS and 3DS, and even if it's just a map and inventory that's handy stuff (and yes, on another note, I don't have the game yet at least, but it's really too bad that Nintendo foolishly removed all tablet functionality from Wii U Breath of the Wild just to make the game play the same on both systems... they should have left in a map and inventory system on the Wii U Gamepad, at least! But anyway.)
But the Wii U gamepad (tablet) has multiple issues -- first, its battery life; it's no good to have your controller need to be plugged in every couple of hours! Yes, I know that thanks to the large screen and how battery technology is that is inevitable, but still it's not fun. Second, because of its size it is kind of heavy. I like large controllers -- the N64 controller and Saturn 3D controller are two of my favorite gamepads, and the original large ("Duke") Xbox controller is Microsoft's best controller, but this is a bit too much, perhaps. Third, that it takes a button press and then several taps to turn the gamepad off while leaving the system on -- ie suspend mode for the pad, basically --s instead of the simple "close the system" suspend of the DS line is clumsy. Additionally, and this is a definite issue, having this bright screen in front of me can be distracting, making it hard to focus on the game screen sometimes for something like Mario 3D World which just duplicates the TV on the controller screen. Since you unfortunately can't turn off the screen while using the gamepad as your controller, this makes me want a Pro controller for some games.
So I paired one of my Wiimotes with the Wii U, and it made the store and interface easier to use than it is on tablet or with the gamepad. On both the 3DS and Wii U the store especially seems to require motion or pointer elements some of the time, in ways you wouldn't think it would... it works, but sometime I have wished the stores would work well with both the buttons AND touch/pointer. It's great that they still have full pointer support in the Wii U, but while I do see some good elements of having a tablet in a controller, the Wii's controller concept is better.
So, with the original Wii, I still do not have a Classic Controller or CC Pro; I thought that the Wiimote + Nunchuck was great for almost all games, and most of the handful of games it isn't good for support GC controllers. The only genre which I might really want a classic controller for is fighting games, which I just avoided on Wii, apart from games actually designed for the system, such as Smash, etc., that is. The Wii Remote + Nunchuck setup has some drawbacks too, such as fighting games, games which really need four case buttons, and such, but I still do think, as I have all along, that it's a better controller than the Wii U Gamepad is. As I think I've always said, had the Wii U been a system focused on a more Wii remote-like controller instead of this tablet I'd probably have gotten one years ago. So, while I like the tablet some of the time, I think this time I'll need a pro controller... ah well.
On a completely unrelated note, it's odd that they put a SD card port on the front of the system... only for the original Wii mode, the Wii U cannot even see the thing. Huh? (And does it have the same "2GB max only, no SDHC or better" limitations as the original Wii does?)
Oh, as for the graphics, they're good. Nintendo's games look as good or better than anything on the PS3 or 360, which was the goal. Third-party software doesn't always meet that level -- see Disney Infinity 2.0, which is lower-rez on Wii U (and seems to have more framerate issues too) -- but the Wii U never got much attention at all from third parties so that's to be expected. Stuff like XCX and SM3DW look fantastic. One other reason I wanted a Wii U, beyond 'see the games that won't get Switch ports', was to finally get the last incarnation of the Gamecube hardware, and it's nice -- a small (compared to the PS3 or 360) but fairly powerful system which could have been more than it was, with some better decisions, marketing, etc. Ah well.
Oh... and you are absolutely right DJ (from a post of yours I remember from a little while back), those rounded-edges discs are amazing! It makes me wish all CDs/DVDs/etc. were like that... it's really too bad these awesome things are exclusive to this now-dead format. Too bad... but it does make Wii U discs nicer to hold than any previous discs.
Finally, I'm not sure what I should do for my Wii. Like, do I keep both the Wii and Wii U both hooked up, or transfer everything over to the Wii U, and use that for both the Wii and Wii U? The biggest issue with that is, the Wii U can't natively play Gamecube games and doesn't have GC memory card or controller ports, so I'd still need something to play GC games with... and since I do not have one of those ridiculously-expensive GC component cables, I don't really want to go back to my GC for that, and that means keeping the Wii plugged in. And if the Wii is plugged in, it's easier to just keep using it for Wii games, rather than switching to Wii mode in the Wii U for them. So right now I have one of my two Wiimotes with built-in Motion+ paired to the Wii, and the other to the Wii U. That works I guess, and pairing controllers isn't that hard though it can occasionally be annoying.
Maybe the thing that decides it is that apparently those Wii U/USB GC controller adapters do not work to enable GC controller support in Wii games played on the Wii U, at least not officially. Sure, most Wii games don't have GC controller support, but enough do that I'd definitely want the option when playing Wii games, and would never only use a system which doesn't support that if I have a better option. So yeah, theoretically the Wii U has one of the larger game libraries around thanks to BC, unless you use homebrew to add a lot more options it's mostly only good for Wii U games I think...
Overall though, so far the Wii U is great (small game library and controller issues aside). Should I have gotten a Wii U a year, or several years, ago? Probably... but I love classic games too, and don't regret most of the console purchasing decisions I've made. Like, what should I have gotten the Wii U instead of? The systems I got last year, maybe, but the stuff I got from 2013-2015 I don't regret for sure... and as for the 2016 ones, here I got a Wii U only 7 months after that PS3, so that's not too far apart.
I just saw Guardians of the Galaxy 2, and well, I'm pretty sure Kurt was trying his best to resemble Jeff Bridges, and also steal his character's entire backstory from the movie Starman. So, imagine that character wasn't as benevolent as he appeared and actually had repeated that same thing across the galaxy.
Well, here's my main thread about this game. I'll put up a detailed review when I'm finally done, but well, I take my sweet time with these things. I still haven't grown sick of it.
They did just recently do some patching to optimize frame rates better and just yesterday added a "voice acting language" option to the game itself. That's two issues resolved.
I found this gem at Goodwill and it immediately occurred to me that it might be severely undervalued being a Sid Meier's game in the old big box. I don't know if there is supposed to be a full manual, but there is the install guide and reference card. The disc is in perfect shape, no scratches or flaws.
I looked on ebay and Amazon and see the game in just a jewel case or sleeve for $30-40 so this should logically be worth more, but I can't find a listing for the boxed version. I know you are an aficionado so you may have an idea of its value. I have better photos on my camera but I'm out of town at the moment.
I find myself saying that a lot during this game. It's probably the best survival horror I've played since Silent Hill bit the musty ol' attic dust. The premise is that you're a freelance investigative journalist who travels to a remote insane asylum, hearing of abusive practices in the place. You get an anonymous tip from a man who worked at the facility as a software contractor for two weeks. Possessed by ambition, you drive out to the place with your handheld camera to record what you find and break the story.
Before long, you're trapped inside the asylum with no escape. Equipped with nothing but a video camera, you have to explore and find your way out. Along the way, you build the story by gathering files and recording the horrors you witness. It's a very simplistic game: there's no fighting, no puzzles, simple objectives... the bulk of it is exploring, running, hiding, and surviving.
You're pursued by various inmates who, through dream therapy and hallucinatory experiences, claim they've found a new god. Their messiah is Father Martin, a man who finds you and decides to guide towards salvation. He separates from you but leads you along, giving you direction from time to time, usually through trails of blood to show the path.
Aside from that, he leaves you to your own devices. Which are, of course, your video camera, and batteries you must collect. The batteries are needed for night vision; there is no shortage of dark rooms and corridors in this game, so you'll need it. In true survival horror fashion, resources are scarce, so you have to conserve the batteries you find as much as possible, leaving you quite literally in the dark.
This game almost gave me a heart-attack in the beginning. You have to go to the basement to start the generator and get the lights back on (yeah, yeah, horror movie cliche). There's a man stalking about the rooms with a stick with nails hammered through the end. As he patrols the rooms, the only way to avoid him is to hide from him, and sneak past him when possible. The game isn't particularly merciful in letting you spy on the man (remember, you have to save battery and use that night-vision sparingly), and audio cues of his whereabouts are limited. I found myself hiding in a room from him (easy enough), but once he walked about out, there was no way to know for certain where he was. Once he spotted you, the only option left is to run back to the beginning, or into another room (and outrunning him is NOT easy). Once, I was able to flee into a room and slam the door and hide under the bed, just barely getting away. (The man in question is obvously not bright; apart from seeing God, he couldn't figure out to check all the hiding spots).
Before I got used to the controls, any time I was in a chase, I found myself screaming and running into walls of tight corridors, frantically trying to turn the camera's night vision off so I didn't waste it, then switching it back on when I needed it again. Once I gave the guy the slip, I just sat back to catch my breath. It was a real love/hate relationship that only a good horror-masochism can provide. Now that I'm more used to the controls, it's a little easier... and unfortunately, also less scary. But that's okay! No more heart palpitations. And it's still scary enough to keep me hooked. I wanted to wait until tonight to pick it back up (to enhance the creepy), but I couldn't wait. I find myself not playing much more than an hour in one sitting. Too tense.
Apparently there's a sequel out (I almost typed SQL, fucking day job) called... Outlast 2. Which was my inspiration in picking up this one. I actually tried it (the first Outlast) months ago at a friend's house, made a note to download it, decided I was too cheap, and let it go. It's supposedly a short game, so it's only 20 bucks... but damn it, my friend got it on XBone for like 10 bucks through some promotion! I wanted that too! Another 10 dollars? What do I look like, an adult with a job?
I don't know the premise of the second one, but I'm eager to see it, plus there's also some DLC on this one. Happy trails, I'll let you know what I think when I beat it.
Well, what are you going to do when it comes time to play those retro games? You can look for a port to modern hardware. That could be the best possible option, if the port is faithful and properly debugged. Among modern ports, you've certainly got no shortage of options, but that's only a small portion of retro games, and those obscure gems made by a company that no longer exists probably aren't getting a modern port. There's also the small matter of "modern" being subjective. Give it a few years, and that modern port will now be a "classic port" for outdated hardware, and if your old hardware is busted, you just have to hope for it to get ported again. "New Super Mario Bros" is now 11 years old, for an unrelated example of how quickly these sorts of things can date themselves.
Alright, so the next best thing is emulation. These days, even the big publishers regularly make their own emulators and sell their retro games as ROM packs (such as the Disney Afternoon collection that just came out). There's also less scrupulous ways to get your collection on modern hardware with a massive host of fan-made emulators, all with features and IPS patching that can make those old games more enjoyable than in the past. Emulators are a pretty tempting option that'll be good enough for most people, but with them come issues of accuracy. Emulators trade off CPU utilization for accuracy, so the more accurate the emulator, the more powerful your hardware needs to be. This is exponential, so while the SNES can be emulated perfectly on modern "gamer" PCs, even slightly more powerful hardware like the N64 ends up requiring computers far more powerful than today's in order to provide theoretically perfect accuracy. As far as how good "imperfect accuracy" can be, it depends on the game. Namely, it's popularity and what sorts of quirks the original programmers used. The biggest most popular hits tend to get the most focus, at the expense of fringe games, especially if those fringe games used undocumented workarounds to get the most out of the hardware they were designed for. Further, while "headerless ROMs" are becoming standard now, in the past headers were expected, and also many ROMs had "dirty" rips which many emulators expect. Further, there's issues of exclusivity. Most emulators store their saved data differently. Things like save states or even the "internal RAM" state can vary too much between different emulators to be portable. Some emulators render the saved data of the game entirely differently than originally coded (such as ScummVM, which emulates a game engine rather than hardware) and will occasionally break compatibility with their own save structure from update to update. Mods are also tricky. Best practice is to design a IPS hack using original hardware, but many modders either can't or won't do this and will use an emulator for testing purposes. As a result, there's a decent chance a hack that worked fine in SNES9X (for example) won't function correctly on other emulators or even the original hardware via flash cart. If that hack becomes popular (such as a translation hack), other emulator designers get pressured to "support" the hack, which pushes their own emulator out of spec even further with actual hardware. Again, how much these issues matter is down to personal tastes, but if you care about experiencing the game exactly as it was originally designed, emulation is full of pitfalls.
Okay, what about just buying an old console and playing it on that? Heck, most Youtubers go that route. This will certainly get you that authenticity, but it comes with it's own downsides. For rarer games and consoles, you're looking at either a long search or paying very high costs for the used hardware. Bigger than this, the hardware IS old and no longer manufactured. That means there's a limited supply and the hardware will all eventually fail with no replacements. For most of us, it's been very fortunate that our gaming hardware has survived so long beyond their eras. However, they all will eventually fail. Some of this can be repaired, but when the processors fail, there's almost nothing that can be done. The games themselves will also fail. The soonest to fail will be the battery backups and those games stored on floppy disk. They're already starting. Lastly, it's important to note that it IS the original hardware, so none of the sweet perks of emulators can be expected, from save states to IPS patching. Although, bit by bit each console are getting custom flash solutions like the Everdrive.
Now we get to reproduction consoles. These are consoles meant to replicate the functions of a specific console. The ideal version would be an exact part for part rebuild with the exact parts being manufactured again for that purpose. None of them hit that ideal. A decent chunk aren't even true reproduction systems, instead being little more than a computer with custom emulators built in to handle the games (at which point it's probably better to go with PC emulators again). The quality on these varies greatly, namely because almost none of them are licensed and they're being made and sold cheaply, and also because there's often not enough documentation so the engineers have to do some reverse engineering, which runs the risk of missing details both big and small. Often, the sound or the color or some other aspect is way off, and just as often various titles simply fail to work at all. There's a few that work better than others, and it's always an option, but again this isn't the accurate experience those who want to preserve history are after. One little spinoff of this idea is the "made from original parts" reproduction. These really are accurate, because they're taking the original parts of the console and repackaging them in a new shell. This raises a number of preservation related issues (one in particular did promise they only took parts from broken systems), but it also isn't sustainable anyway.
At last, we get to FPGAs. This stands for "field programmable gate array". This is a special processor that can be transformed into another processor by adjusting it's logic paths. Due to it's design, it isn't nearly as shrunk down as modern CPUs, and it can only take the form of processors it has enough logic gates to support, but it means it can be custom set to any task within those limitations a designer can dream up. It was originally designed to allow data centers to design hardware accelerated processing of any function they wanted (such as weather forecasting or protein folding). The advantages of having the hardware specially set for that particular task outweigh the relatively fewer logic gates it has to work with, and they can be designed and configured to run in series.
You probably already see where this is going, but since this processor can take whatever form you wish, it can also be turned into a game console's processor or processors (a single one can act like multiple processors linked to each other, so long as the total logic gates is below the count in the FPGA). Due to the limitation on logic gate count, it'll be limited to older consoles for now, but still this is an amazing boon to game preservation. In fact, there's one repro console out there that uses this very method, and the results are incredible. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/t...ffordable/ Now, accuracy depends on accurate knowledge of the chips in question, but if you get that nailed, you've got a perfect reproduction. This sucker even gets the little graphical glitch line in MM3's menu looking identical. Further, they're adding the "mappers" (special addon chips in various NES games) to the FPGA profile to perfectly replicate them too. They're adding processors via software updates, because we're living in the future. This repro isn't limited to NES games either. One of the main designers is releasing "unofficial" profiles that set the FPGA up like a Master System or Gameboy and so on. In fact, due to them having full control over the chip's layout, they can do things like "pause" games at any point, save states, real time IPS patch injecting as ROMs are loaded, and all of those things one would expect from emulators. I expect it would be easy to set up cartridge and saved data backups too. They can even apply certain patches that disable hardware limitations like sprite flickering or overclock the system, since the FPGA can easily perform faster than the NES hardware could if it's asked to.
This isn't a panacea that'll resolve all the problems with maintaining classic game history, but it's a huge step forward. It's the first time I've seriously considered getting a reproduction console to replace my actual NES hardware, and I'm paying very close attention.
![[Image: A8FFh2n.jog]](http://i.imgur.com/A8FFh2n.jog)
