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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • Five young recruits find the five golden Switch cartridges.

    Recruit 1 is walloped by a big tie-wearing gorilla after eating its entire banana hoard.

    Recruit 2 grows too big after eating a prototype actual Super Mushroom and turns into a Toad.

    Recruit 3 is rejected after touching the Triforce and being sucked into the Evil Realm.

    Recruit 4 loses an IRL series of WarioWare games played in a giant replica TV.

    Recruit 5 is hired after returning the free Switch 2 prototype they were given despite initially being rejected for painting graffiti on the wall with Splatoon paint.




  • Nintendo has been more about innovation in gameplay more than graphics pretty much since the turn of the century, and aside from the Wii U it’s paid off for them pretty well, so why should they change that model? Further, this isn’t like the Wii days in which they got only shovelware or severely butchered versions of 360/PS3 games from third parties: the main difference in many third party Switch games compared to their MS/Sony counterparts is mostly just running at 30 vs 60 FPS with no other major graphical or gameplay changes.

    That said, Nintendo has been blessed to have mostly weak competition in the handheld console market up to now, so also hasn’t felt much pressure from outside in the handheld world until recently. Their handhelds have had quite the long lifespans: the Game Boy lasted from the late 80s to the 2000s before the upgrade to the GBA, and even after the Switch released the 3DS was still seeing relatively strong support until the turn of this decade, putting that at around a nine-year life cycle. I mention this because the Switch for many is as much a handheld as a home console. Now the Steam Deck and similar handheld PCs are giving Nintendo their first strong handheld competition since the PSP (among dedicated gaming machines, I don’t include smartphones). That handheld challenge may also be behind fans’ push for a Switch 2 soon and/or featuring more graphical power than Nintendo may have originally been wanting. But even then, they are mostly best off moving at their own pace and not trying too hard to keep up with the competition. It’s when they have tried to keep up that they hit their lowest numbers compared to MS/Sony, such as the GameCube and the Wii U. When they do their own thing and take the time to get it right is when they are at their best.





  • Really, this seems to be the best way to spread Linux adoption to me. I would bet that Linux got at least a good few users from the Steam Deck coming with it pre-installed. Big way to show people that for most things the average user doesn’t need to go into the command line to use their system for what they need as well. Of course, continued improvement in the software included in the most popular distros would really boost Linux adoption as well. I’ve seen plenty of people say they’d make the switch - if only they could use MS Office or Adobe software on it. Alternatives like LibreOffice, Thunderbird, Kdenlive and the GIMP have come a LONG way since I first made the switch around 2009, but especially the Adobe software still outclasses the competition when it comes to features. MS Office isn’t as hard to let go of, especially since you can still use Office 365 Online on Linux and LibreOffice is closer to having all the OOTB features of MS Office than the other programs are to Adobe, but you have to convince people to give it a try first and a lot of employers still require MS Office for work.

    I will also say, though, that it was only due to Windows Vista otherwise bricking my laptop back then that I even made the switch. I’d heard of this mysterious OS named Ubuntu so I thought I’d give it a try to save my laptop before I bought a new one, especially since I was living abroad at the time and didn’t want to deal with the hassle of buying a computer with a foreign language version of Windows on it. So I had a friend burn me a copy of Ubuntu 8.10, it worked like a charm, and I only ever since ran Windows at home when dual-booting for a couple years for gaming purposes before Proton became a thing. I didn’t even know Ubuntu was Linux until I’d installed it and started learning how to use it in earnest. Really showed me how even then Linux wasn’t so difficult to use for the average computer user.


  • I really should go back and try picking up where I left off in Unicorn Overlord weeks ago, but for some reason I’ve found shiny hunting in Pokemon Violet more entertaining. I’m rather surprised at how Unicorn Overlord felt so bland and disappointing. I think I was expecting one type of game and got something quite different in a way that just couldn’t hold my interest. Maybe I just got burned out on high fantasy JRPG games and need to play something different yet still fun for me for a while.


  • It seems to me to be mainly from people who are dedicated to the Unix philosophy that programs should do only one thing, and do it well. Tying everything up into systemd doesn’t follow that. I don’t care either, and I don’t mind systemd, but some people care about it enough to throw paragraphs of hate on it wherever it’s mentioned online. And apparently it’s “bloat”, and to some " bloat" is worse than the devil himself.


  • I think they might wait for an FE4 remake until the next console. Engage had a middling reception and just released last year. FE games generally come out around 3-4 years apart unless they are companion games in the same setting (such as FE4 - 5 (Jugdral), FE6 - 7 (Elibe), and the Wii games (Tellius)), and a 3-year gap from last year will align with FE4’s 30th anniversary, which will likely help it sell in Japan (the novelty of another classic title finally releasing in the West will probably be enough to sell well here). If the Switch 2 releases early next year, 2026 will also be great timing to get enough of a handle on its capabilities to optimize for it well and really give it some good presentational polish.




  • Aside from hyper-aggressive protection of their IP to try to stop piracy, I legit can’t think of any scummy behavior Nintendo does that other game companies don’t do at either an equal or worse level. That includes MS and Sony.

    EDIT: Further, emulation of a current-gen console may technically be legal depending on how you do it, but it’s not harmless. Some can/will use it in an essentially harmless way, but you and I know that the vast majority of users will use it to enable piracy.


  • Started Unicorn Overlord. Heard it was a strategy RPG, my favorite genre, and seeing the art style felt I had to try it. The gameplay is alright, I prefer moving individual units on a grid like Fire Emblem or P5 Tactica, but it’s an Ogre Battle style, where you build and move groups freely around the map. The art is really good. My one big criticism so far is that the story feels extremely generic. Hero is an exiled prince who needs to reclaim his kingdom from darkness and save his kidnapped girlfriend. Gee, where have I seen that before? /s I’ll keep playing but my motivation is low so it may be slow going.