FM Chiptune Musician | DX Complex Staff | SEGA, MSX and Retro Tech Dork | He/Him

Formerly _NetNomad@kbin.run
Microblogging at _NetNomad@oldbytes.space
https://netnomad.dxcomplex.com/

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Joined 4 months ago
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Cake day: August 15th, 2024

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  • i don’t think it’s so much that they’re actually the baddies as it is that they became too dogmatic and process-oriented to be able to do the good that they were trying to do. on the micro scale they were too inflexible with their rules to always do the right thing, and on the macro scale they could bend the rules however they wanted in the name of The Greater Good. protecting the Jedi order so that they could hypothetically do good later was more important than admitting to mistakes and exposing themselves to criticism to do tangible good in the moment. in less words, they meant well and had their heads pretty far up their asses. the Dooku episodes of Tales of the Jedi demonstrate this very well

    whether or not this is just the Jedi Order or the larger light-side-user community is up for debate. a lot of people point to the prophecy of balance being brought to the force and say that that required an equal number of Jedi and Sith, and that idea seems to have seeped into Disney canon, but at least originally Lucas seemed to intend for the light side to represent balance and for the dark side to be a corruption of that, in which case the Jedi Order being assholes meant they also weren’t really Jedi to begin with

    another commente argues that of course they’re assholes because they’re a religion, but i’d argue that they’re assholes because they’re an organized religion. if being a Jedi is about harmony with all life and the force, as opposed to using it and abusing it, you can’t create Jedi by using and abusing life forms the way a beaurocratic institution invariably does. it’s not a coincidence that all of the great Jedi heroes throughout SW are either deviants within or otherwise estranged from the order. standing up for people and doing the right thing almost always involves sticking it to The Man, and the Jedi Order were The Man


  • honestly i’m not even sure how the author of this managed to boil down feed UI preferences into “questions” or “options” or whatever. all of the same content is there, it’s just a matter of if it’s expanded or collapsed by default- merely information density. what it really comes down to is older sites collapsed things by default, newer sites expand things by default, and most people like whatever they grew up with. i’m gen z and much prefer the older style just because i was on forums and old reddit right around when my peers opened their twitter and instagram accounts. there is definitely a discussion to be had there about which format is healthier and why companies prefer the latter format these days, but to skim right past that into the bit about third parties makes me think that was the real point the author wanted to make and contorted their UI argument to get there





  • for me it’s the other way around. i do like Adventure but it’s a game full of compromises, with most areas needing to work for multiple characters and the Adventure fields ultimately limiting the scope of the game to three relativey-close locales. then comes Sonic Adventure 2, a game with purpose-built stages for each playstyle spanning multiple continents and even space. while the treasure hunt stages were arguably worse, the mech stages were ten times better without the timer and the random tranaformations. and the speed stages, oh man. without the spam dash you really have to learn how the physics and movement options work, but when you do you’re tearing through the stages rolling on walls and making gravity-defying leaps. it’s amazing. 3D Sonic does have a trend of turning things that were challenges in 2D loops into just breather setpieces, but SA2’s introduction of rails is the one time they bucked that trend- get enough momentum going before you hop on or you’re not going anywhere! shame every game since has locked your speed once you’re on them. the extra power-ups and chao boxes scattered throughout the levels give you extra places to explore and reason to do so. to me Sonic Adventure 2 really finally delivers on everything Sonic Adventure wanted to be. it does lose points for it’s rocky voice acting and overreliance on automation- although in both cases to a degree less than Adventure 1- but it’s a great game and the only 3D Sonic i can say that about, as close as Adventure 1 and Frontiers may have came


  • the 2600 and the coleco telstar are the first that come to mind. it’s a shame wood grain fell out of fashion right as game consoles fell into fashion! i also love the the grey variant of the Saturn. Panasonic got two hits in a row with the 3DO and their GameCube-compatible DVD player thing.

    honorable mention goes to the Daewoo CPG-120 which I only just learned about today. it’s a consolized MSX2 that looks like a cross between the Enterprise and a Roomba. i can’t decide if it looks magnificent or awful and it’s arguably not a console to begin with but hey

    edit: oh, and sharp’s twin famicom! in general companies that made other kinds of electronic appliances had a way of bringing a certain class to console design without eliminating the fun



  • Coromon is only a ripoff in the same way that any scrolling platformer is a ripoff of Super Mario Bros. building off the basic chassis of existing games to make new ones is a practice as old as videogames itself and why genres exist. the difference is that Palworld is full to the brim with monsters that can be difficult to tell at a glance from existing Pokémon- look at this article’s embedded image, that’s just a Wooloo with horns on it’s hind legs- whereas Coromon, Digimon, Dragon Quest Tamers, Yokoi Watch, Cassette Beasts, and anything else in the genre aren’t ripoffs and are even available on Nintendo consoles

    i know that’s not the angle Nintendo is using in court, but it’s certainly the reason why they’re in court in the first place while ignoring the plethora of older games that would also clearly violate those patents




  • everyone is quick to takes sides here but to me this just feels like a sad situation all around. i can see why the original translators thought that closing the repo was essentially revoking permission. i can also see why eadmaster saw the GPL license as explicit permission, and that closing the repo meant they weren’t working on it anymore. i hope cooler heads prevail because it would be a loss to the community if anyone involved were to take their ball and leave





  • the article is more about AAA games than consoles, and i agree with the article’s takeaway. graphical improvements have been an Emperor’s New Clothes situation for about a decade for me now. the reason we have those hundred hour AAA games is because with today’s technology, the only advantage big studios have over indies is sheer volume of content. people are starting to wise up to that more and more and those studios will have to find a different way to justify those massive budgets and price tags or simply go under

    as for consoles, though? i think the average PC gamer underestimates the value of things Just Working to the vast majority of customers. PCs themselves are having a tough time against smartphones and chromebooks and computer literacy is decreasing from gen z to gen alpha as a result. the seeming failure of the newer xbox and playstation has more to do with the aforementioned dying AAA market and the fact that they’ve become dumbed-down gaming PCs themselves instead of Just Working. the Switch successor will probably not be great but still sell gangbusters because Nintendo is monopolizing the market on Just Works, even if just barely!