Rural dwelling pedant here: Dollar General is not a dollar store. Dollar Tree is, but Dollar General is a garbage store with regular-ass prices. They only stock shit and the prices are often higher than regular grocery stores.

It’s the only food store my town has and it sucks so bad. At least Dollar Stores are affordable.

You can take it from my cold, dead, cheese covered hands!

I’m a pretty avid old video game enjoyer and own multiple CRTs. Also had the pleasure of owning and maintaining a 19" Sony PVM until I traded it to a friend for a mountain of GBA games. Still keep a 13" hooked up for the occasional VHS or old game.

That said, I feel like a lot old sentiment toward emulation and modern display tech is rooted in internet opinions from 2010 or prior.

Yes, older and cheaper LCDs with a Bluetooth controller on old emulation tech pales in comparison to a Super Nintendo hooked up to the cheapest CRT ever. But both display tech and emulation tech have come a long way. High quality upscalers, ultra deep blacks, low latency game modes, insane refresh rates, FPGA, Retroarch run-ahead, cycle accurate emulators, and a dozen other breakthroughs have made retro gaming on modern panels extremely enjoyable.

Have you tried any of the various shaders available? I find that a good shader set gets pretty so close to my CRTs that I honestly can’t tell the difference. I have a Retrotink for hardware scaling and it also has very good shader options.

There are options now: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinden_Light_Gun

Very well stated, and echoes my sentiment exactly.

My game time is precious to me and sitting with that feeling of failure while I waste time just getting back to zero feels bad to me. I’d rather be, you know, making some sort of progress.

It’s a gorgeous game, very lovingly crafted. But I would cheer for some built in accessibility options akin to the most recent Ninja Gaiden that let me dial in the experience I want.

Boring straight white cisgendered man with regular hair and no facial piercings here: stop trying to normalize your shitty opinions by pretending like everyone thinks them. We don’t.

I adore the PSP! I know a lot of titles feel kind of weird or like they’re having to make major compromises due to the lack of triggers and a second stick. Many games felt sort of stuck in-between handheld and consoles because of it.

In no order here’s a list of some of my absolute favorites on the system:

• No Heroes Allowed!
  • Amazing, funny dungeon building game where you play the bad guy. Like Japanese dungeon keeper with ecological systems and 16-bit inspired graphics.
• Cladun: This is an RPG
  • Fun, simple action RPG. Has a sequel that was also really fun.
• Half-Minute Hero
  • Light-hearted parody RPG where you play in small bursts.
• Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger VS Darkdeath Evilman
  • Sentai parody mystery dungeon game, and does both very well.
• Tactics Ogre
  • A very very impressive remaster of the SFC game. One of the best SRPGs ever made! The PSP version of Final Fantasy Tactics is also good, but I prefer Tactics Ogre by a wide margin myself.
• Ys Seven
  • Really all the Ys games on the system are really good. Ys Seven is the most modern feeling and gives you multiple characters to swap between. Fun series of action RPGs if you like that sort of thing. Kind of Zelda-y but with less puzzles and more combat and RPG elements.
• Super Stardust Portable
  • Really fun shmup published by Sony.

Texan here: we barely get to vote on shit at all. And they’re gerrymandering to make it even harder.

I’d call Texas a clown car but it’s too big to qualify.

Beans and rice is the real answer here, +1 to this

Lots of meals are cheap but few will also fill you up.

I had a Pixel on Google Fi with this. When I got a call I could tell my Pixel to answer, ask who was calling, and ask the purpose of their call. I could see their responses transcribed and press automated response buttons.

It was amazing. Not sure why other phones don’t support it, definitely a feature I miss.

As stated in the article for anyone who missed it: it’s still available on GOG and is DRM free there. It’s also currently discounted to $4.99, so if anyone is worried about having (legal) access to the game then that option is still available (for now).

I use bookmarks for that. All the browsers I use support them.

For those unaware: RSS is still a thing and still works. You don’t need fancy platforms and algorithms to follow sites that post stuff you care about. Just an RSS catcher.

On F-Droid, Capy Reader does a great job and supports full article downloads to circumvent the sites that only put previews on RSS.

This is a good take. I remind players all the time that even though I’m GMing I’m a player too. I’m just playing a slightly different game. I’m here to have fun and enjoy myself, not babysit.

For my personal games I am as well.

“Make friends with gamers, don’t make gamers out of friends” is an old tabletop adage that took me a long time to really learn.

For public stuff the best that can usually be mustered are safety tools and clear guidelines. But (rarely, thankfully) some people are just there to sabotage.

I GM public games and games at conventions, so sometimes it still crops up. People don’t always make it readily apparent ahead of game time that they’re going to pull shenanigans like this.

My fix has always been: that’s fine! They go off on their own adventures. Now please roll a character that’s going to play the game we’re running here tonight.

I run gritty low magic games with death and safety tools. Which group do I join!?

I can’t speak to journaling because it has never worked for me, but as a fellow anxiety-haver now approaching his 40s: please talk to someone if you’re able.

You’ll find every reason and excuse not to, you’ll tell yourself it’s not that bad. You’ll minimize your problems. You’ll self-medicate and self-therapize without even realizing it’s what you’re doing.

Proper medication and/or therapy is absolutely critical and life-changing. Please don’t wait to go, it’s genuinely worth the hassle and effort it requires.