Words On Wednesday

I'm a HUGE fan of trophies and achievements in video games and RetroAchievements has made it where I can get that same experience with games that were made well before achievements became commonplace in the industry. Don't ask my why I like achievements and trophies so much. I genuinely don't know, I just get a little dopamine hit every time I see one pop up. And I realize that a lot of people don't really like achievements, some even go so far as to hate them, so systems that allow you to turn them on or off really are the best of both worlds.  Furthermore, I do want to explicitly say that these games were not incomplete or inferior WITHOUT achievements. I'm not going to tell you that Super Mario World became a better game with achievements. It's just a neat thing for me to be able to see individual accomplishments listed together in a single place across all my games on that platform. So what IS RetroAchievements? It's a site that tracks tasks for older...

I recently discovered a project that allows Nintendo 64 games to be recompiled and personally got The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask running on my Steam Deck natively. It is absolutely insane, and I think it could breathe new life into playing N64 games on modern hardware. Back in May, I came across a reddit post in the r/SteamDeck subreddit about Majora's Mask Recomp. The post mentioned mod support (for an N64 game???), so I was both puzzled and intrigued. I decided to do a little research. It turns out, there has been a project running over the past year or so that allows  the user to "recompile N64 binaries into C code that can be compiled for any platform." To flex the Computer Science degree a bit here, a binary (file) is a program that has been converted into the necessary 0s and 1s to run on a particular computer architecture. Computer architectures vary wildly between different processors and platforms, so a binary for one chipset is unlikely or even impossi...

I mentioned a while back in January 2024  how I really wanted a Steam Deck. It seemed like a dream come true for a traditionally console gamer wanting to dabble in PC gaming. I certainly couldn’t justify the cost of a desktop gaming rig or a higher end laptop, but the Steam Deck is closer in price to (or even cheaper than) consoles. Furthermore, it maintains that console simplicity with SteamOS where you just select a game from your library and install it. Everything about the Steam Deck seemed to be exactly what I wanted, it checked all the boxes. As with any big purchase that I’m considering, I did a deep dive. Buyer’s remorse is awful and I tend to be more able to avoid it by digging in and understanding the product before I buy it. If I realize it isn’t what I need or I don’t want it as bad as I thought, I can pull the ripcord and get out before I’ve spent any money. It isn’t fool-proof, but it’s pretty effective. I looked up reviews. I joined the subreddit. I asked friends wha...

A new Zelda game comes out later this month and I’m still not really sure how to feel about it. Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94RTrH2erPE I’m excited, for sure. New Zelda is always a good thing. But I pre-ordered Tears of the Kingdom and I still haven’t actually played it. The kids did, and they seem to have enjoyed it. For me, I just couldn’t get enough uninterrupted time with the Switch while I was simultaneously interested in picking up something new. Alas, I OWN TotK, I just haven’t bothered with it yet. Echoes of Wisdom is interesting in that it actually stars Zelda, the namesake of the entire franchise. Despite the propensity of players to name their character “Zelda” in some past entries of the game, Link has always been “that little green man” (as my grandmother called him) that we got to actually play as. That finally changes with Echoes of Wisdom, as Princess Zelda is the player character. I’m glad we finally get to play as Zelda. That’s a cool theory that fans ...

The Pokémon Presents  from last month gave fans a lot of cool stuff to talk about, but what seems to be making the biggest buzz is the announcement of Pokemon Legends: Z-A and the return of mega evolutions. Source:  https://youtu.be/6Qi4COrQ7aA?si=AwXviGCovUZWuhLg Pokemon has been somewhat polarizing with the last few generations, as most generations have introduced some sort of mechanic that occasionally feels a little gimmicky and gets abandoned after a little while. Mega evolutions were first introduced in gen 6, and quickly disappeared besides its presence in Pokemon GO. Similar analogues such as Dynamax/Gigantamax and Terastallization came in subsequent generations, but they were similarly short-lived. The teaser trailer for Pokemon Legends: Z-A ends with an image of the mega evolution logo, which seems to undeniably confirm that they will be making a comeback in some form. For a lot of fans, this is excellent news. Personally, I’m not so positive. Mega evolution in its o...

I am fiending for a Steam Deck, and I’m not even ashamed about it. Although I have discussed before how there is a time and a place for consoles , I’m finding myself gravitating more toward the idea of PC gaming lately. I’m not saying that I’m done with console gaming; I still think the Nintendo Switch is probably the best gaming console ever made from the perspective of form factor. A single device that can be both a handheld and traditional console is amazing, and my family leverages that capability to great extent. And maybe that’s why I’m now becoming more interested in PC gaming specifically with the Steam Deck. Effectively, it’s the PC equivalent of a Nintendo Switch. It can be a handheld, you can dock it for a more stationary experience, and the OS seems to be very much geared toward browsing a game library and selecting something to play. My aversion to PC gaming traditionally has largely involved the difficult decision between building out a desktop rig and buying a high end l...

…he’ll ask for an absurdly hard to find game. And much like the children’s story about a mouse and a cookie, there were a lot of steps before we reached a resolution. This all started a few months ago when I was playing The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest. There was a puzzle in the spirit temple that I couldn't figure out, so I looked up some video guides to find the answer. One video in particular, part of a let's play series by ZeldaMaster, was super helpful and he had finished the entire game. If I ran into more problems, I would just check out his videos to find the solutions. The kids really liked his video, so they kept watching the series. This ended up helping me, because I got stuck a few more times in the spirit temple (worst temple in the game) and they actually remembered what he did to get through. I didn't even have to watch the videos myself. After they finished the let's play series for Master Quest, they still wanted more material. Fortuna...

A new Ratchet & Clank game has been out for nearly a year, and I still haven’t played it. Anyone who knows of my gaming preferences can tell you that Ratchet & Clank is one of my favorite intellectual properties. I’m talking in the same echelon as Zelda, Metroid, and those kinds of classics. I LOVE Ratchet games. The graphics, the music, the shooting mechanics, it’s just all amazing. I’ll play them like a gosh dang addict until I’ve upgraded every weapon, found every secret, and satisfied every skill point. I even managed to get my wife on board with Ratchet: Deadlocked and we both had a really good time eking out everything that game had to offer. So, you’d expect that I would be on board with a new release on day one. And in some other scenario, maybe I would be. The problem is, I don’t have a Playstation 5 and I won’t, at least not for a long time. I can’t even blame it on console shortages and scalpers buying up the few that are made. I wouldn’t buy one if shelves were stoc...

I really wish Nintendo had a trophy system on the Switch. It’s a topic that has been discussed back and forth, with plenty of evidence for  or against  them, so I won’t try to assert my opinion as fact. Personally, I would just like it better if trophies were available. As a confession, I used to be a self-proclaimed “trophy whore.” On my PS3, I would specifically seek out games that I could get the platinum trophy for, essentially the mark that a game has been finished completely. If I walked away from a game without the platinum, I felt like I wasn’t getting my money’s worth. When I finally did get platinum for a game, I could confidently say I had milked it for all it was worth and continue onto the next game. Back when I had more time to play video games, this wasn’t an issue. Gaming took up the bulk of my free time, and there was plenty of that to go around. If anything, I was more concerned with making sure I had enough game to fill up my time, rather than enough tim...

“ Metroid ” is an action-adventure game released on the Japanese Famicom and North American NES in 1986. Spawning a series that now spans more than three decades, the game was certainly good enough to generate a sequel or 13. Does the original hold up to the test of time, or have sequels improved on the concept to the degree that the first game has lost its luster? Story - 7/10 The story of Metroid is shallow, but motivational nonetheless. Samus Aran is a bounty hunter sent to destroy the parasitic metroids before space pirates can use them for destruction. (S)he must explore the depths of the planet Zebes (which I’ve always pronounced like the city of Thebes, Greece ), gathering suit upgrades and weapons, and defeating powerful monsters. Ultimately, Samus destroys Mother Brain and (nearly) wipes out the metroid population. After the player manages to escape the exploding planet, it is revealed that -gasp- Samus is female. As the only real character with any sort of backg...

I spoke of how I had discovered StepMania back in November 2017 . I bought a PS2 to USB adapter online, and I had high hopes that it would allow me to play with my dance pad. Admittedly, I’m a little late on the followup, but I did finally try to use the USB adapter  with the game. Shipping from an obscure little company in China obviously takes a while, so I didn’t get in any hurry waiting for my package. It took a few weeks, but the adapter finally came in. I told myself I would try it out, but I sat it aside and didn’t get around to it for a while. And by “a while,” I mean about 5 months. Things came up, I forgot about the adapter, and I just never got back to it. Finally, in March 2018, a friend came up and asked if I had ever gotten to try it out. I obviously had not, but we decided to hook it up. I expected there would be some configuration, so I was prepared for some setup time. With a black belt in Google-fu, there are very few general tech issues that I can’t solve wit...