Lippeth

Only the cool ones.

Just completed Resident Evil Remake for the first time directly after my first time playing through the entire original Resident Evil and it was a lot of fun. Being able to directly compare and contrast each of them so quickly made for a satisfying experience. I've played both of them as Jill many times through the years but never got that far, but switching to Chris made everything click for some reason and I was able to finally complete them both. I can't say I have a preference for one over the other; I like the more colorful decor of the original but the additions in the remake really fill out some sections. Playing each one makes me appreciate the other and I highly recommend both of them, in either order. I plan to get back to my Silent Hill 3 playthrough on hard difficulty soon enough, but have been enjoying the Resident Evil Rabbit hole I've fallen into. I bought a physical copy of Code Veronica for the Dreamcast and have been playing that on a crt just because I can.

I do still have a hardware SC-55, a mkII, an 88, the SC-VA vst, and have played around with the Nuked version as well (it's 1:1 with real hardware as far as I could tell), and I even use RLNDGM.sf2 for soundfont players which is the same as gm.dls in all but some minor volume balancing. As spoiled as I am for options, I tend to still prefer the old dumpy built in Windows MIDI (and GUS) most of the time. So it's not a deal breaker to not have access to it with Linux, I just can't help but feel its absence.

After getting comfortable with Msys64 to compile Doom ports and getting to know several Linux distros with hyper visors, I finally installed Linux Mint for real a month or so ago. About the first thing I did was kick myself out of the sudo group by following online advice to get a bluetooth controller to work, and spent the next several days on a forum learning what groups even are and how it all works, but eventually got it sorted. I still don't quite understand how to type out folder paths for config files to read, especially from other disks rather than copying the data to the home folder, like gus patches, or even a folder with iwads for example (I guess you have to mount them every time you want to use them, or copy them into the home folder, but not the application's folder because I can't even find it and configs have their own folder, but only sometimes?). Either way, I slowly started booting into Windows more and more and haven't used LM in a few weeks now. The workarounds required to do things I guess I've always taken for granted, and other things like not knowing how to open folder locations for anything I've installed has all started to wear me out, but I'm sure I'll get back into learning it all, though I've no real need to use it other than a general curiosity, while my actual work still requires apps that can only run on Mac and Windows, so I'll likely never be free from them completely. All other learning opportunities aside, the thing I miss the most when playing Doom on Linux is Microsoft GS Wavetable Synth, oddly enough.

Metal Slug series is one of the first that comes to mind:

I can tell you now that it's going to run at 35Hz no matter what wad or port I use.

Found a dead bird, looked up and saw this on the window.

I'd say due to the nature of the game, that's a perfectly valid strategy if not expected. I definitely did that in a few spots, though overall I had a more "whatever happens happens" mentality which combined with my overall ignorance for what to do and where to go is probably why I ran out of ink ribbons in the middle. Either way, I finally finished it, in just short of six hours and with 22 saves. It rewarded me with a special key, which based on the screenshot goes to the locked door in the dressing room with the big mirror. I'm tempted now to play the game with Jill to see if I unlock something else and with less saves and in less time, but in the version I'm playing Jill doesn't use ink ribbons. I guess it's a better time than any to start a new game of the REmake! I've opted to emulate the Gamecube version instead of playing the remastered version I have on Steam because I want to experience it as if it were 2002 and just coming out, except that I won't be using the correct controller. Plus every comparison video I watch doesn't really do the remaster any favors, not that I would even notice a difference without a direct comparison, but I made my choice either way.

I went from getting actually frustrated toward the beginning trying to find the best route to conserve both ammo and health, to really admiring the layout of the mansion. I haven't finished it yet, and I currently don't know where to go(it was actually kind of stupid, I had been to the pool near the welded door but didn't engage it at the right angle apparently, until a hail mary attempt after leaving and returning so many times), but in the process I finally acquired the magnum which one-shots those reptile things, and decided to more thoroughly inspect key items in my inventory which definitely gives me things to try. I've also used the last ink ribbon I had which makes for 18 saves, but I'm sure the next time I play I'll save more strategically. My appreciation really came together after realizing the whole point of raising and lowering the dam after finding the battery to the second lift, and the minigame of mixing chemicals to make v-jolt was a fun extra thing. I don't know if it was necessary to complete but it played out in a satisfying way during my play through. My ultimate goal is to become very familiar with this version so that the remake will be as effective as it set out to be, taking advantage of my knowledge of the first Resident Evil. I will say that being able to skip door transitions is something that would not be easy to get away from with this pc version, and if playing as Jill you wouldn't even need to use ink ribbons to save progress. I grew up playing Resident Evil 1 2 and 3, but only ever completed 2 and 3, with this first one just being a little hardcore for me to ever get very far in, but it's been really rewarding this go around, and I've always loved the atmosphere; certain hallways and rooms remind me of the funeral home my family used to own when I was young and spent a lot of time in, so it's great to finally crack the code on it, so to speak.

Looks awesome, whatever it is.

Icon of Sin would be pretty surreal to encounter. A giant grinning face that spits skull cubes that transform into other demons, with a screaming severed head on a spike inside of its brain.

I'll have to check out that game as well sometime. I would say the Silent Hill games are much lighter on the survival than Resident Evil, but the puzzles and riddles are memorable. Not all puzzles, but some of them have different clues, riddles or are different puzzles entirely using the same objects, and can even have randomized solutions on different difficulties. I keep starting a new game of the GOG version of the first Resident Evil, as it's the only one of the first three I haven't ever completed and I have a friend bugging me to try and get through the remake, but I want to finish Resident Evil before playing Resident Evil. I either run out of healing and ammo items and die repeatedly shortly thereafter, or run out of herbs and die early trying to save ammo. I was able to get far enough to return to the mansion where the reptile things stalk the halls, but that was while emulating the psx version with a heavy reliance on save states, and being able to skip door transitions on the pc version is just too irresistible. Right now I'm in the process of trying to get a feel for which zombies I can run past every time and which ones to kill, and how to kill them without taking several hits. So far if it's just one I'll either shoot or knife them until they fall, then I'll position myself behind them, stab them on the ground and then slice their back when they get up. Since it's usually a group of two or three zombies, I end up taking too many hits while figuring out any combination of shooting, stabbing and running. Update: got the rhythm for it and learned which routes to prioritize, and got a feel for who to kill and who I can run around every time. This game is no joke!

After recently completing Silent Hill 3 on normal I went into Extra New Game mode on hard action and hard puzzle difficulty. I don't know what I was expecting but I was NOT expecting to spend the entire evening familiarizing myself with Shakespearean tragedies to understand vague references in order to solve the first puzzle in the game. On normal difficulty it was as simple as rearranging five book volumes to make a number on the spines legible and inputting that number on the keypad to unlock the door, but on hard mode there are multiple passages referencing themes from different plays in a certain order, and each book has a volume number, and if you examine each book in your inventory it tells you which play that book is. So after an evening of thoroughly reading a summary of every act of each play multiple times, I finally deduced what the correct order is, but then there's still the locked door with a number pad. I must've spent another hour trying all sorts of things, all while reading the riddle passages and still going back to read play summaries. But I finally got it and just...that was a lot, but actually really satisfying to finally hear a click and see onscreen "It's unlocked". Had I actually paid attention in school I would have maybe streamlined a part of the puzzle for myself, but I really wasn't expecting to learn the plots to Shakespeare plays while playing a scary video game, that's for sure. The spoiler shows my process to find the door code after learning the order of the plays, but doesn't explicitly show the code.

They're included in Retroarch and can be found in: retroarch\shaders\shaders_slang(or shaders_glsl)\handheld\console-border\ and the presets I used in the screenshots are dmg.slangp for the original Game Boy and gb-pocket.slangp for the Game Boy Pocket. The shader itself provides the overlay, so its one step that doesn't require anything else, though any video filters should be disabled or the shader will look distorted. You can adjust the video scale among other things in Shader Parameters if you want to zoom in a bit.

I'll check those out, I do like a good video pinball game. Devil's Crush and Alien Crush for TurboGrafx-16 and Genesis are among my favorites, and I often play the newer Demon's Tilt and Xenotilt games. A Kirby pinball game sounds brilliant, and the gator one looks good from the screenshots. You're gonna spin me off onto a whole new thing with suggestions like these, but I do love to chase whatever catches me at any given time.