I saw something within the past year or so that looked like a new version of Paperboy and I got excited but then it turned out it wasn’t and I was disappointed.

I remember the rough start they had, but major kudos to them for sticking it out and turning it into a fantastic game, and even more kudos for all the content they’ve continued to release over the years expanding the game with none of it as additional purchases/DLC. I’ve bought the game once on Xbox One when it was on sale because that was the only system I had that could run it, but I suspect I’ll buy it again for PC when I have a system that can run it because it supports PCVR and I feel like this would be a fantastic game for that.

This whole saga has been fascinating in that it has revealed an entire side of gaming I really didn’t know existed. I’m not looking very deeply into it, but just seeing how much exists and how many categories and classifications go into it is surprising, although I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised given how long I’ve been online.

Going through the lists everyone has posted I realized I’m surprised I haven’t seen anything from the Medal of Honor franchise posted. I only ever played Medal of Honor: Frontline because a roommate had it, but it was scored by Michael Giacchino, who also composed the scores for the original Medal of Honor, Medal of Honor: Underground, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, and Medal of Honor: Airborne. Giacchino won awards for the first four soundtracks in the series and it was his video game work that caught J. J. Abrams’s attention and led to him scoring Alias and Lost, starting his TV and movie career.

Also, if you enjoy soundtracks, you might like StreamingSoundtracks.com. It’s been around since 2001 and features soundtracks from movies, tv shows, and video games. It’s a free streaming radio service with the playlist queued by listeners along with limits on how frequently any track can be played, so you won’t hear repeats very often. A manager at a past job played it most days. One year someone took advantage of the “No repeats” rules and played all the horror tracks throughout October so that on Halloween there were basically no horror tracks available, angering many when they realized what had happened. I found it one of the more impressively planned and executed pranks I’ve personally witnessed.

I really like SimCity 3000’s jazz soundtrack. That was the first time I remember playing a game where the soundtrack was released separately.

Honorable mention goes to DX-Ball 2, which introduced me to a lot of electronic music and the concept of module/tracker music. The game by default came with just 4 .mod songs but on the website you could download additional files from the same creator, or add other .mod files from other sources to a folder and they’d appear in the game. First shareware game I ever bought, and paid by sending a money order through the mail because I was too young to have a credit card.

I’m guessing they will aim for Steamdeck support? That seems like an ideal platform

From a studio that also released a winemaking sim called Terroir. Seems like an interesting outfit!

Looks like PC Gamer is going to be mining this for multiple articles; there’s another one talking about how he got started at Microsoft because he was yelled at by Steve Balmer for distracting his brother, who was working there writing a C compiler at the time. I think I’ll just watch the video, it’s about a half-hour.

I don’t think I’ve spent a dime on Epic but have a nice little collection going there. I have spent a reasonable amount at GoG and have a nice collection there, too.

And at those prices I’ve bought it at least twice

If you’re willing to consider something not Wear OS, Garmin watches offer many of the same features and typically multiple days of battery life.

Demo available for Mac and Windows on Steam, trailer shows planned Linux support. I’m going to have to check that out later, it looks chill.

TIL Zynga still exists

That doesn’t sound like a kind of “AI” usage I’m particularly concerned about, but would be willing to listen to reasons of why it is or isn’t a problem

I’ve had my account since Portal was released, so that’s around 20 years ago? Frankly I’d be shocked if I’ve spent even $1k and over 20 years? That doesn’t sound too bad. Almost everything I’ve bought has been on sale, or fairly inexpensive to begin with.

Yeah, I’ve never played Madden online. That’s very much a couch game to me still. Not that I’ve played it much in years. I picked up my first copy in over a decade a couple years ago when it was on sale at the end of the season.

I haven’t seen it mentioned and feel like it should count, since it really just had a solo programmer working with a graphic designer and musician, but RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 took a big chunk of my gaming time.

It sounds like this would be expanding that to a lot more commercial customers, though?

I forgot about using those scripts. I’ll have to put Grease Monkey on my newer computer. I added an extension a couple months ago to stop websites from preventing me from pasting into text fields, but I’d guess using a script would be a more efficient way to deal with it than adding an extension for every annoyance!

I’ve spent so little time with YouTube Shorts I didn’t know you could change the URL to a normal video

“We will store backup copies of our code in a secure repository in Switzerland, and we will provide our European partners with the legal rights needed to access and use this code if needed for this purpose.”

If Microsoft is going to actually risk giving access to their source code then they’re really scared!

But really, I read the whole article and there’s nothing mentioned about a blacklight test.

Blacklight test

I was just looking and realized there were some old racing games I used to love, so I filtered to that category and found they have the Moto Racer Collection, including 1, 2, and 3 for $1.59. I think we had Moto Racer 2 and I remember playing that a lot, so I’ll be picking those up.

I’m going to need to look into finding the old Need For Speed, Midtown Madness, and Motocross Madness games from, like, 25 years ago. I might still have some of those discs somewhere, actually.

I’ve bought very few microtransactions and the most satisfying was the Delorean Time Machine from Back to the Future in Rocket League

Didn’t enabling audio mean you couldn’t have 4 players connected while in use, though? But, if you’re using headphones you probably don’t have more than one player anyway.

It looks fun, but that price is going to be something to make me pause

When you say the BIOS update works, are you seeing something on the screen? If you connect the computer to an external monitor do you see anything?

No Man’s Sky is down to $23.99. I remember the launch was poor but they kept working on it and improving it. I picked it up a couple years ago on Xbox and have enjoyed it

Does 2020 work?

I never pay full price for any of the games, they always have a few discounted and rotate through their full catalog eventually.

Yeah, at least the last couple have longer support periods now, but at the time my Pixel 2 stopped getting support it looks like the Pixel 5 (then the newest model) was only expecting 3 years. It might entice me to switch back at some point.

That explains why when I looked at Graphene later it didn’t support the Pixel 2

It was the single biggest reason I switched to iPhone. Usually I was dying to upgrade after 2 years because the phones would start to suck. Then I got a Pixel 2 and it was great! But after 3 years it stopped getting updates even though the hardware still worked fine, and I looked over at my stepdaughter’s iPhone, which was 6 years old but still getting updates, could still get parts replaced at a local repair shop. It started to feel like that was the better value as flagship phones started costing $800+.

Does this link work? Because the one in the main post was taking me to a webpage. [email protected]

Edit: No, doesn’t seem to be for me right now

I’d like an X but also haven’t really seen much to push me to upgrade from the One X I currently have. The only thing I haven’t been able to play is Flight Simulator and I’d kind of rather be on PC for that. It’s probably cheaper to get the console than build a PC, but my wife got me a Quest 2 a couple years ago and VR seems like it would be pretty fun in Flight Simulator.

One I haven’t seen mentioned is Puerto Rico. One thing I like is there is essentially no random chance to this game; everything that happens is a result of choices you or your opponents make.

I generally like the Civ games but I’m definitely not a Day 1 player. I’ll probably pick this up in a heavily discounted bundle with the inevitable expansions and at least some of the DLC in a Steam sale a couple years from now.

Despite including a numpad like the Intellivision controller, the GameStation Go doesn’t currently include any games from Atari’s recently purchased Intellivision library. But [YouTube reviewer who was hands-on at CES] GenXGrownUp says including those titles—alongside Atari Lynx and Jaguar games—is not “off the table yet” for the final release.

I only know of the Atari Lynx from reading about the history of Chip’s Challenge but I’d be interested in seeing that.