What You've Been Playing This Week

[importaku]

Spotted that megaton musashi wired was on sale on the eshop for like £20 i already loved the first game and although sadly there's no physical i decided to grab this one. Well i thought it was new lol. Something happened that i have never experienced on switch before when i booted up english version it saw that i had a save for the original megaton musashi however this save is for the japanese version seems the new game didn't care and popped me right into the english version 100% eveything intact and my progress all carried over. LOL it's wild so basically wired is the original with a few tiny extra bits bolted on so essentially the same game now i'm planning after finishing my current playthrough i'm them going to go right through the game again to experience the story in english as i was struggling through the jpn version. Makes upgrading my rogue a ton easier now i know what verious stats do more in depth i love the battling in this one it feels fast and fluid and it's still flashy as hell.

However the game is like 16gig and pushed my poor switch to the max i had to archive a ton of stuff to make room so even with doing that now my poor 512gig card is full so i have had to dig deep and buy a 1tb card for my switch as it's bursting at the seams with gamey goodness to be fair it's done well holding nearly 600 switch games on there.

[dataDave]

How is it? How does the machine feel?

Tetris feels like the Rosy Retrospection mod of the original GB game, but with modes and options. I can’t fault it, and I’ve not been able to put it down, however the pros will probably still prefer something like Pandora’s Blocks.

As for the machine itself imagine if Rolex made a GameBoy clone. It’s quite easily the finest piece of gaming hardware I’ve ever held in my hands. They seriously need to start producing controller button membranes for all of the classic consoles.

[dataDave]

I got the EverDrive GB-X7 for it off Santa for Christmas, but I’ve started collecting carts anyways - something I’ve not done since the early 2000s with the Neo Geo AES. I was never a fan of the GBC and thus never owned or played any of the games, so buying actual carts feels right with this. Going to have a right little collection before long!

[Dogg Thang]

As for the machine itself imagine if Rolex made a GameBoy clone. It’s quite easily the finest piece of gaming hardware I’ve ever held in my hands. They seriously need to start producing controller button membranes for all of the classic consoles.

Wow, that’s high praise. Sounds really great. I may need to get one.

[wakka]

Ah the Gameboy by the arms dealer lol.

[endo]

Just read a longish review of the Chromatic, having not heard of it before (or Palmer Luckey tbh). There's just something so American about the whole thing: an entrepreneur who's not bothered about manufacturing hardware that could be used indiscriminately to kill people, but is a massive video game nerd at the same time. They always have names like Palmer Luckey too: "Tucker Happey, Neo Geo obssessive who's designed the ultimate FGPA Neo device, but who kicks babies to death at the weekend."

[Dogg Thang]

Didn’t he also create Oculus too? Haven’t seen any lack of support here for that one.

[wakka]

He did indeed create Oculus, then later flogged it to fellow paragon of human rights Meta, Inc.

[Dogg Thang]

Right, I’m going to pitch this to you and you can either buy it or not but, even not owning a Chromatic (but owning Oculus stuff post-buyout), this is how I’d like to think of it. The guy made his money. He made a fortune from Oculus and a case could be made that early adopters and supporters essentially could have contributed to what happened next - he started some sort of arms company that seems to have ended up worth even more. But of course nobody could have known that. It’s not their fault.

The guy is not going to get any richer on Game Boys. That’s not how people become billionaires. Arms industry? For sure. Every day he’s in that is making him money. This on the other hand is for the love of it.

We can’t control what he spends his money on. But every moment of his time spent obsessing over Game Boys is a moment he can’t spend in the arms industry. That’s a win.

[wakka]

No ethical consumption under capitalism anyway. Not worth stressing about.

[dataDave]

But every moment of his time spent obsessing over Game Boys is a moment he can’t spend in the arms industry. That’s a win.

For China and Russia it’s a win.

He didn’t get into designing arms for the money, he was already a multibillionaire. He got into weapons design because China’s autonomous drone systems were vastly superior to what the US had at the time. Now they’re roughly 25 years behind.

You kind of need a technologically advanced army. Ask Ukraine.

[Dogg Thang]

You kind of need a technologically advanced army.

Not me. I’d have nowhere to put them. Even if I took down the Lego sets.

[fuse]

I got caught up in the hype around these and bought one too despite finding Palmer Luckey to be pretty repulsive on a multitude of levels. I'm (still (STILL)) upset with Dave calling it a MAGA Gameboy. Putting that aside, it is a nice device, but I think calling it equivalent to something like a Rolex, even as someone who's never owned a Rolex, to be overly generous. There's a few of us over in discord who bought one, and to varying degrees we've all got screens that are slightly 'off' in terms of how they're sat in the chassis, and given how much focus is on the screen as a reason to own one of these, that's a bummer.

Specifically comparing it to something like the Analogue Pocket, I find the branding - from the website all the way through to the packaging and look of the device, to be weirdly juvenile too. I know the minimal, Apple-adjacent look of Analogue's kit is not to everyone's tastes, but I do think there's a good argument that this is far more suitable for a device aimed at folks now well into adulthood, whereas the Chromatic comes in a box that I am fairly sure I would've called out as phoney even as a kid. The device itself is also covered in un-necessary labels and text - from colour bands in the corner, high-contrast branding, and labels on the buttons that can... also have the option to be in Japanese, despite this never even being a thing on Japanese GBs?

I get that it's focusing on GB and GBC specifically and that 1:1 screen reproduction, and sure, hyper-specificity is something I can respect, but I also think that the Pocket does an incredible job with these formats and on a larger screen. I also find it weird that they decided to barely accessorise the thing. They've got some very bright, very plastic Koss headphones which look like they'd tear my hair out, and that's it. No cases, no rechargeable battery pack. There's a lot to be said for the screen, the buttons, and so on, yet so much of the overall presentation of it runs against the prestige they're trying to give it.

[QualityChimp]

Yikes!

[dataDave]

I got caught up in the hype around these and bought one too despite finding Palmer Luckey to be pretty repulsive on a multitude of levels. I'm (still (STILL)) upset with Dave calling it a MAGA Gameboy. Putting that aside, it is a nice device, but I think calling it equivalent to something like a Rolex, even as someone who's never owned a Rolex, to be overly generous. There's a few of us over in discord who bought one, and to varying degrees we've all got screens that are slightly 'off' in terms of how they're sat in the chassis, and given how much focus is on the screen as a reason to own one of these, that's a bummer.

I've never owned a Rolex, but I do have a couple of Omegas that weren't put together perfectly. One has a dodgy glass, and the other has a misaligned dial. They were gifts, so I couldn't get them exchanged without looking like an arse, but thankfully these are both issues I can have resolved with a service at some point.

With the Chromatic my shell came with two hairline scratches on the paint. I was instantly glad about that because it cemented my mind on absolutely not babying this thing at all - it's meant to be nigh on indestructible, so I'm not even using the case I bought for it (which has gone to the NGPC now anyway). Whenever I take it out of the house it goes directly into my pocket with that little crocheted smiley star dangling out.

I've gone all anti-EverDrive suddenly. I hate navigating that rubbish menu to get to the games. So far today I've been playing THPS3 and Mario Tennis in their real cart form. Super Mario Bros. Deluxe is coming in next.