Steve

What were you gonna do with that PDX-2000 anyway? Were you gonna get it out of storage and use it?

Damn, I've never seen anything like that before. I wonder if it has anything to do with the foam/sponge part of the case lid that presses down on it.

Google's AI is fucking jokes..... Abigail Shrier is the author of a handful of books, none of which have been shown to have killed anyone. Mao Zedong was a totalitarian politician whose policies were responsible for the deaths of an estimated 40-80 million Chinese people.

I've been playing around with this today. To play games I was initially just clicking on "ROMs", picking a system, then picking a game, but if you click on "RA Games", it launches RetroArch and you can pick from a whole bunch of other systems, including Dreamcast. Pretty cool. Performance has been OK to excellent in the games I've tried. The Dreamcast version of Crazy Taxi was probably the most demanding game I tried and it ran pretty well, but the framerate was not the best. It was certainly playable though. The screen size is OK for a lot of games, but in some games it is hard to read text or see smaller objects. The original Game Boy only had a 2.6" screen, but obviously the games were designed specifically for it, while this runs games from systems designed to be hooked up to TVs. I think the only thing that I don't like is the system software and how much of a pain it is to tinker around with custom operating systems. The custom OS I wanted to install does not work on my "Plus" model, only the standard one, but I found some other options. I messed around with one for an hour or so but I couldn't get it to work. It would just say "No ROMs found", even though they were all there in the correct folders. Also, using a custom OS, or upgrading the official one, typically requires you to download a HUGE image file, split into a bunch of smaller files, which you then have to unzip and flash to your microSD card. I ended up installing the latest version of the official OS and the download was just under 40GB, then you have to unzip that to an IMG file, then flash it, which all takes time. These retro handhelds that run emulators all seem to require some tinkering to get the best out of them, and the guides you can find online often seem aimed at people who have experience with them, rather than n00bs like me.

An Anbernic RG35XX Plus: - It's styled like a Gameboy. It has a 3.5" IPS screen, 2 microSD card slots, 4 rear paddles, USB-C charging, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI out, vibration motors, and a 3,300 mAh battery that lasts around 8 hours. You can pick one up for around $65. You can wirelessly stream games from PC to it, and if you have a friend who has one, you can pair them up wirelessly and play certain 2 player games. It supports a ton of different systems up to and including PSP, such as NES, SNES, Megadrive/Genesis, GBA, MAME, PS1, PC Engine, and about 10 more. The version I bought comes with 5,000 games on a 64GB microSD card. There are a couple of negatives to it. The microSD card(s) that come with it are supposedly awful quality and won't last long, so you'll need to purchase 1 or 2 better microSD cards for it. Also, the OS isn't the best, however, there are a couple of other operating systems you can install on it, including one called GarlicOS which seems highly rated, so I'll have a tinker around and install that at some point.

You have one? What don't you like about it?

Anyone here got one? MKBHD's review makes me REALLY want one, but it's way too pricey for me. I love that Samsung is committing to 7 years of updates too.

Google has issued an apology over this shit, cos if you asked its AI to generate "images of German soldiers in World War 2", you would get black Nazis and Korean stormtroopers, lol.

😂🤦‍♂️

I tried out HAWKED, which is a new F2P looter shooter that's PVPVE. You play in groups of 2 or 3. The idea is that you solve puzzles to retrieve glyphs and when you have enough, you can unlock a final treasure room containing artifacts, then you have to take them to an extraction point and survive long enough to extract them. The map you play on is large and is split into various areas, such as beaches, jungle sections, ancient ruins etc. You not only encounter AI enemies, but other groups too and if you kill them you can steal their stuff. You can get around nice and quickly as you can sprint and slide, plus you also have a hoverboard and grappling hook. I think the game has a lot of potential, but it needs some work. For instance, I found it hard to tell if a weapon I'd found was better than the one I already had equipped. Also, the AI enemies are just too weak IMO, as you can shred them with pretty much any gun, even the bigger bosses. My team made it to the final treasure room and I grabbed the major artifact, which seemed to mark me as a target, but nobody came and challenged us - neither AI, nor real players, and when we got to the extraction point, we just had to stand around for 60 seconds or so and that was it. I expected a bunch of AI enemies to attack, or teams of real players to turn up and try and steal our shit, but nope; nothing. It's definitely worth giving it a go though IMO. It's available on Windows, PS4, PS5, and the Xbox Series consoles. It's F2P with in-game purchases and a battle pass - the usual shit - but it doesn't seem to be pay to win from what I've seen. It has crossplay, so you can play with people on different platforms, and you can group up with friends in a party.

Welcome to the forum! I've no experience of what you're trying to do, but hopefully someone will be able to help. The forum is really quiet these days, so it might take a while before anyone else replies.

Summary of the business update: - They are bringing 4 games to other platforms. They didn't say what they are, but they're all over a year old, and it sounds like 2 are big AAA titles and 2 are smaller games. According to games journalist, Tom Warren, the games are Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, Grounded, and Sea of Thieves. Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones game are not coming to other platforms. As for future plans, all of their games will still come to Game Pass on release day, and Game Pass will not be coming to other consoles. It does sound like they may bring more games to other platforms in the future, but there's nothing concrete yet. Games that they do bring to other platforms will have cross-platform play/save functionality. They will be bringing Activision Blizzard games to Game Pass soon, starting with Diablo IV on March 28th. Game Pass now has over 34 million subscribers. They are still making new consoles and hardware. They will have new products out this year. They also plan to have their next generation Xbox be the biggest leap in tech/power they've ever done. They briefly talked about game preservation and how they plan to have people be able to bring their digital game libraries forward to their newer consoles, including game saves. There was no mention of physical media though. They have new games to announce, which they will be talking about at their game showcase in June. That was basically it. They were deliberately vague in places, but it doesn't sound like they're making huge changes to their strategy.

MS have announced a business update for Thursday this week, so we will find out what's happening then. Apparently, Phil Spencer told staff on the Xbox team that the Xbox isn't going away and they still plan to keep making new consoles, so I'm assuming they're just going to bring some previously exclusive games to other consoles, and have some new games be timed exclusives, rather than be fully exclusive.

I've been playing Neon Abyss. It's a rogue-like with procedurally generated levels. It's a fantastic game IMO. It's a 2D run and gun shooter, so you basically enter a room, kill everything in there, pick up coins, weapon drops, power ups etc., then it's on to the next room, then eventually you get to a level boss. What's awesome about it is the sheer number of weapons and upgrades you can find. There is a ridiculous amount of variety, for example, there are 60 unique weapons, all of which can be powered up. Also, you can pick up eggs that will float in a line behind you, and every now and then one will hatch into a little minion that can help you in some way, and those minions can also level up and get stronger. You can play as several different characters, each of which has their own specific strengths. It's available on Windows and all consoles. It's part of Game Pass, plus it's on sale for £3.99 on PlayStation until Feb 14th. Here's a gameplay video: -

I doubt it, cos it's competition that would typically keep them low.

It started with a rumour that Hi-Fi Rush would come to the Nintendo Switch, but now it seems that a bunch of MS's games will be coming to Switch and/or PS5, including Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones game. It seems like a very strange thing to do given that their business model is now based on selling Game Pass subscriptions and a large chunk of that comes through selling consoles, which means having exclusive games on offer. Over the last couple of days the media has reported pretty heavily on this, and Phil Spencer has finally commented on it: -

From the creator of BioShock: - There's no release date yet, but it'll be on PS5, Xbox Series consoles, and PC.

Last night I checked out Go Mecha Ball, which has just been added to Game Pass: - It's a mix of twin stick shooter, Marble Madness, and playing Wrecking Ball from Overwatch. You can move around really fast when you're in ball form and you can boop enemies off the map, or slam down on them from above. There's lots of different weapons and upgrades to pick up. The weapons have a limited amount of ammo, but when you slam into enemies in ball form, they will drop ammo that you can pick up. It's wave-based, so on each level you have to survive 3 waves of attacks, then you can move on to the next level, and there are boss battles every so often too. It's good fun and definitely worth a try if you have Game Pass.

Last night I checked out Stumble Guys, which is a shameless rip-off of Fall Guys. It's free to play with a premium battle pass option. The game starts out with 32 players. A course is selected at random. The first 16 that make it across the finish line qualify and the rest are eliminated. A new course is then selected, 8 players are eliminated, then a final course is selected and whoever makes it across the line first wins. I actually won in my very first game, lol: - The controls are very simple. You use the left stick to move and A to jump. If you press A again shortly after jumping, you'll dive forwards on to your belly. The courses have a mix of themes. There's one with water slides. One has a ton of trampolines, so you have to bounce from one to another. One has floor tiles that disappear shortly after you step on them. There's a bunch of different courses. There's a ton of stuff to unlock; characters, skins, emotes etc., but a fair bit of it is locked behind the premium battle pass. It's all cosmetic though, so there's no pay to win shit going on. It's pretty good fun and it's very easy to play so young kids can play (it has no voice chat, so you don't hear annoying squeakers thankfully, lol), but it's not something you'd play for hours on end. It has a party system so you can group up with friends. Matchmaking takes no more than 15 seconds at the moment. It's available on mobile, Xbox, PlayStation and Windows and it has cross-platform play.

This game is fucking CRAZY. If you're into horror games and you game on PC, just play it, as it's cheap as fuck on Steam. Don't watch the video below! If you're not a PC gamer, or you're not into horror games, here's Redshell (popular Overwatch streamer) playing it: - I've never seen anything else like it.

I've been playing a cool puzzle game called Grindstone. Rather than me explain what it is, here's a short review: - I'd highly recommend it if you're into puzzle games. It's available on a bunch of different platforms.

This looks promising, and it'll be on Game Pass day one!

One other downside of this is that it has no equivalent of the YouTube home page, where you get recommended stuff based on your watch history. Because it's a privacy-based app that specifically avoids any tracking by Google/YouTube, that makes perfect sense, but just be aware of that if you give it a go.

Good shit man. I like it!

If you watch YouTube using a desktop computer, Freetube might be a decent option for you. You can import your subscriptions from an existing YouTube account. It has zero ads, or other annoying bullshit. The interface is really clean. It's extremely customisable. You can download any video with a couple of clicks. You can still read comments if you want to. You can't sign into an account, so you can't leave comments, but that's one of the only downsides really. It's free and you can download it for Windows, macOS, and Linux here: - https://freetubeapp.io/#download No doubt it will get shut down at some point, but use it while you can!