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Give this a go https://www.myfonts.com/pages/whatthefont
Might be worth trying with a screenshot of the intro of Xenoblade - it’s a pure white background for a lot of it.
In what world would you expect it to NOT be compatible with Switch cartridges?
- Game Boy, Color, Advance - backwards compatible
- GameCube, Wii - backwards compatible
- Wii - Wii U - backwards compatible
- DS - DSi - 3DS - N3DS - backwards compatible
For all their faults, Nintendo have been strong with backwards compatibility for 30+ years, the only exceptions being the SNES (NES backwards compatibility existed initially but was dropped), N64 (fucking complex custom architecture and final cart based console) and Virtual Boy (lol)
This is 7 years now since the launch of the switch. That’s longer than the period between the NES western launch to the SNES 1985-1991, longer than SNES to the N64 (1991-1996), longer than the N64 to the GameCube (1996 - 2001), longer than GameCube to the Wii (2001 - 2006), Wii to Wii U ( 2006 to 2012) and Wii U to Switch (2012 - 2017)
The ONLY exception being the OG Gameboy to GBC, 9 years.
The problem is, we are increasingly a minority. The majority of people now see nothing wrong with using default browsers and apps, they see ads as completely normal, they trust Google, tiktok, etc with no issues.
Bear in mind whereas I grew up with what I call the golden age of the internet, late 90s to late 00s, those today know nothing different than the internet as it is now. I’ve tried explaining this to people before - the response is always indifference. Apply that to the countless millions (billions?!) of mainstream users worldwide. It’s sad, but it’s how it is.
I honestly think the only way this is going to be stopped is if and when the EU commission step in.
Xenoblade has no relevance to anything that came before it (aside from a small couple of references).
Xenoblade 1, 2, 3 can be played in any order. They are self contained aside from certain references. 1 is more serious, 2 vastly more light-hearted (for most of it, anyway). 3 takes place countless centuries after the other two with references to them in certain circumstances, removes the anime-ness of 2 and makes things vastly more serious. There’s really nothing lost playing them out of order.
Playing in order gives you the “oh shit, it’s that place”, or person or music or whatever experience as you go on, but you would get that just as easily in any order I’d imagine. And the game works great on Yuzu on PC in 4k too.
Edit: yes there is an overarching plot in the trilogy, which reaches its conclusion in 3’s expansion. But the games are structured in a way that is best for new players while rewarding long term fans.
Xenoblade 3.
a world where each person only has only ten years to live and is forced to fight throughout in a never-ending war between two nations in a decaying land. There’s a lot of depth surrounding the main characters, especially joint protagonist Mio who has only 3 months life remaining at the start of the story. Game gets real fucking dark.
And nah you don’t need to play the first two to enjoy it, as long as you avoid the DLC expansion as that’s the series conclusion.
Edit: also the most believable and well written romance between two characters I’ve ever seen in a game and the fantastic VA makes a huge impact (all UK talent - Mio’s VA is better known for Peaky Blinders, Jenna Coleman is better known for Dr Who, for example). And anyone who says they didn’t cry in chapter 5/6 is a liar.
Half of every morning meeting is trying to work out wtf is happening with teams in my experience.
A frequent occurrence is when it, without warning, changes your text to right-to-left Arabic layout, so every now and again you get a message from a colleague that reads like they’re trapped in the black lodge
I also had a moment yesterday when pop up messages took over almost my entire screen and I had to force quit teams. If anyone used to get pop up spammed back on MSN Messenger twenty years back it was just like that.
Teams is absolute fucking shite.
Fuck. It could be Wario Land or Donkey Kong Country 2 (a bit later, 1996?) for me. Been playing them almost constantly since 1994 along with Mario 1-3. This gets even more fucked when you throw in all the ports, randomizers etc.
For actual hard numbers (roughly), it’s Xenoblade for me.
- Played once on the Wii when it came out here in the UK in 2011. 107hrs.
- Played it again through on the Wii. This was around the same, savefile says 142 hrs.
- Played through it on Dolphin. Probably 80hrs or so, I don’t have the numbers on this. Throw another 100 hours on.
- Played through it to 100% on the New 3DS port, twice. This was probably another 200+ hrs.
- Definitive edition. Played through once on the Switch to 100% (this took 97 hrs) then twice again on Yuzu in 4k. 150 hrs so far on Yuzu (just got to Valak Mountain in this current playthrough)
Don’t even get me started on X, 2 and 3. but well worth it.
Dude, it literally took me two clicks from this post to get this:
“Time to re-experience this classic survival-horror game with Machine Learning upscaled backgrounds, seamless masks and many other small improvements in this all-in-one texture pack. Please note that RESHDP is a free fan project. Please check the FAQ before playing”
An emulator that “performs poorly”?! Maybe if your PC sucks/is out of date.
I completed TOTK via Yuzu at a near locked 60fps, native 4k auto-HDR with reshade. This was on my HDTV with a pro controller.
If that’s poorly performing then I’m gandalf’s aunt
Edit: I have TOTK on the switch too. It is absolutely no comparison - the switch is at the point now where you absolutely get a better experience on PC than on the switch. Switch 2 plz, Nintendo.
Heh yeah, I don’t know if you’re in the UK, but we had a service called Ceefax/Teletext, which was a text based service sent through to your TV (sorry if I’m explaining obvious things)
Digitiser was the games magazine on Channel Four’s Teletext service. It was about 30 pages in total, split between news, reviews, features, and letters. It was updated every day. I was the very first person to know about Sega pulling out back at school in my class because Digitiser had the news that very same day.
Digitiser was also fucking hilarious. They got pulled from air more than once due to their content constantly pushing boundaries. A feature each week had a different guest writer (all fictitious), such as Mr T (constantly shouting about people messing with his bins), Fat Sow (a pig), George Michael and Phil Mitchell from EastEnders. I genuinely miss it so much. At least we have it mostly backed up online! Here’s one day during the CD32 era, including a contribution from Liam Gallagher: https://www.superpage58.com/digitiser-vault-teletext-screenshot-image-archive-2018-01-03.htm
When they finally got cancelled, they had a final message, asking you to press reveal on the remote. When pressed, it showed you the channel Four Teletext mascot, turner the worm (a pink worm), being sick (white fluid). Yeah, it’s exactly what it sounds like: https://live.staticflickr.com/212/506622777_1b9520378f_z.jpg
And it was fucking insane
So, Xenoblade 3 is the final part of the trilogy. It shows what happens to the individual worlds of Xenoblade 1 and 2 once they collide. However the series is structured in such a way that you can arguably play them in any order and not miss out. There are of course twists and callbacks throughout to reward those who play them in order. The one absolute rule is for the two massive DLC expansions. Xenoblade 2 (Torna - to be played after 2) and Xenoblade 3 (Future Redeemed - to be played only after playing EVERYTHING else as it wraps up the trilogy).
I have it on my deck and it works great on Yuzu at 1x resolution, or 0.75 with FSR. make sure you use powertools to limit the deck to 4 cores. Xenoblade 1 Definitive Edition runs great too. Xenoblade 2…doesn’t.
Six second video of XB3 on my deck becaust why the fuck not: https://youtu.be/kYyipO1Vd2M
best bet to see if you’d like it are these two videos I took. The first is the first 15 minutes of the game - it introduces the world, scenario, characters, and also introduces the gameplay part-by-part. NO SPOILERS in any of these, I promise.
The battle system is gradually introduced throughout, at a pretty good pace (eg. chain attacks, transformations, combos, class changing). It ends up sometimes chaotic, but always fun. Chain attacks are an entirely other thing, relying on measured logic and number skills. The other main draw is the story - this game takes some pretty dark turns. Your mileage may vary though, depending on your tolerance for cutscenes. There’s still 100+ hours of actual gameplay easily.
and this is a short video showing the scale of the world (one of 9 massive regions - there’s another desert, a canyon and a forest halfway up a mountain trail in this one. The sword in the distance holds a city at it’s peak), plus a short battle with 7 team members:
lastly I guess, if you’re a dr who fan (who knows?), it may interest you that Jenna Coleman voices the Kevesi Queen.
anyhow the game is cool imo. I got the first Xenoblade a week before the UK launch date in August 2011 as I ran a Blockbuster at the time (Xenoblade was localised by Nintendo UK and came out here, Europe and Australia a mere year after Japan. NOA refused to launch it in America, until a petition forced their hand another year later). It blew me away, and the remastered Definitive Version is a classic. The fact that Nintendo UK localised it is why it has it’s unique UK focused VA throughout. The regions in the games are Welsh, Scottish, etc. It adds a huge amount of character that American voiced games lack imo.
Worth giving a shout out to Xenoblade X (outside of the trilogy’s storyline), which still has the largest world of any game I’ve ever known, eternally stuck on the Wii U. That’s a fucking mental game and I don’t even know where to start with it. If you like Xenoblade, mech battles/flights and Attack on Titan’s soundtrack (sawano), then it’s the game for you.
anyhow you may end up hating the game. hopefully this does sell a few people on it - including PC gamers!
I’m going to name a few potentially obscure ones from my 30 years of gaming
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Micro Machines 2 (SNES and Mega Drive) - as far as I am aware, only MM1 had wide release, the rest were PAL only but have modern 60hz and NTSC patches now. Great fun, and you can play as Violet Berlin (for those like me who used to watch Bad Influence!)
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Looney Toons Collector: Martian Alert!! (Game Boy Color) - this one is hard to categorise! Its a top down adventure RPG like Zelda, you start as Bugs and recruit further characters each with their own skills to traverse the world and solve puzzles. For example, Elmer Fudd has a gun, Tweety can fly over gaps, etc. It is actually really fucking good, and holds up better than many GBC games. You can also trade with other people who have the game, and there’s a sequel I haven’t even played yet!
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Wario Land Virtual Boy - this is without a doubt one of the best platformers ever made, and it’s a damn shame it’s been forgotten by most. HOWEVER! Emulators exist, and the game runs like a dream in retroarch/mednafen.
A few tips: the virtual boy is a 50hz console, so set your display to that or use gsync otherwise you’ll have stuttering. The console is also natively a wide-screen display, which is sweet. Steam Deck is perfect for it, and looks great in black and white. If you have a VR headset, that’s a good idea too to get the proper 3D experience, but it’s not essential in any way whatsoever.
- Neutopia II (PC Engine/TG16) - a shameless Zelda clone that is actually worth playing as a spiritual successor to Zelda 1. A neat little what if, if Nintendo had expanded on the original rather than Link to the Past. It has an awesome soundtrack, save battery backup (wahooo) and is just great fun. The first is good too, but feels significantly more dated than the sequel
And lastly, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch) - I don’t care if it’s the opposite of unknown, I’m recommending this one. Culmination of the best trilogy I’ve ever known in gaming, and by far the best game I’ve ever played. With the 4k, 60fps and rebalance mods when playing on PC it’s simply incredible. Based Monolithsoft.
The soundtrack is mind-blowing, has the best battle themes in the series and you can tell just how much work went into it (main two characters have flutes they use in the story to send dead soldiers to the afterlife - Yasunori Mitsuda then made those flutes for real to be used in the soundtrack). Just, every single thing about the game exudes more love and care than most games I’ve played and it shows. After so many years of being unable to finish a story due to corporate wankery (xenosaga…), Takahashi finally got to make his masterpiece. And for those who were put off by the anime-ness of Xenoblade 2, 3 is very much reined in, adult and pretty fucking dark. No big anime titties here - it’s war, and it’s not pleasant. It’s more like XB1 - 2 is the outlier, and its happy-go-lucky feeling makes far more sense after seeing what happens in 3.
You’ve named some classics there!
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chuchu rocket - I first played this when it came out on the GBA as a launch title. It was the first Sega game released for a Nintendo console, ever, after they discontinued the Dreamcast. Aside from being a fantastically addictive bastard of a game, it was also a surreal experience seeing sega on a Nintendo console. Seems normal now, but back then it was fucking weird.
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Mario Paint - had this on the SNES with the mouse! Great memories. Been playing it again recently on my MiSTer FPGA along with a modern optical mouse!
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Super Tennis is indeed awesome and the 3D effects were mental back then. Still great fun
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Cel Damage I got as a rental along quite a few times as our blockbuster had a three for price of two deal back then. I never bought it but it was great for occasional parties and shit
Brain Age I never got along with, not interested in fishing, and not played the football game (is that really football, as the ball being kicked, or American hand-egg? No idea, but I’ll give it a go!)
I got one when I was 18, I think it was around the time it was first hacked using Liberty City Stories.
I used it almost purely as a retro gaming device…I don’t think I owned a single psp game other than LCS!. The GBA emulator was stupidly good. I also used it to listen to web radio and watch TV (I remember I used to watch 24 on it at uni the day after it aired each week). The 4gb memory card cost me £150! Being able to play any PS1 game on it via cfw was also great.
It was a fantastic device, but in terms of actual games made for it, it didn’t have much of an impression on me. The Vita did though - that introduced me to Dangaronpa, brought me back into Ys, etc…so many classics.
I need to get into PSP’s library really, I have a steam deck which is perfect for it.
Also, don’t forget emulation! It’s an amazing retro gaming device.