missingno

No one here is sending those PMs. This community was created in response to the spambots that have been going around, trying to investigate where this spam is coming from.

Problem is, it's suspected that the Nicole in the photos isn't the spammer, and the spammer may even be trying to stir up a mob to dox and harass whoever the real Nicole is. So people are concerned that this community may be putting that person at risk.

I know that I'm one guy, and my purchasing decisions ain't gonna change nothin'. But I still try to vote with my wallet as much as I can in order to feel like I'm doing the right thing. I'm the guy old-fashioned enough to still only buy native Linux games because I don't like the idea of replacing official support with just hoping Proton happens to work, knowing full well that this replacement happened long ago and I am too late to turn back the clock. And I've got a whole list of publishers I will never buy from under any circumstances.

I will never ever ever spend money on gacha, because if I don't know what I'm buying then I'm not buying it. Even putting aside the ethical concerns, that's just a stupid purchase.

But I have a lot of nostalgia for TF2, and I don't know how to reconcile that. They kinda got away with sneaking in gacha before we realized how evil this is. I haven't touched the game in a long time anyway, but if the Heavy Update ever saw the light of day (it won't) or even if they just brought back rd_asteroid (even more not happening), I'd be very tempted and I dunno what I'd do.

There are two gacha games I still play, without spending any money on, while knowing what a hypocrite I am for playing them. Mahjong Soul and Riichi City. They're the two most populated Riichi Mahjong clients - it's either these or Tenhou, but Tenhou isn't in English, hasn't been updated in a long time, paywalls a number of features behind a subscription model, and is steadily losing players to its competitors. If a new client with an ethical business model took off I'd switch in heartbeat, but I can't imagine one would ever take off to a point where I could queue at any time of day and get high-ranking opponents at my level. So I'm kinda stuck with these.

The Wii U tried to bring the DS to console, but there was one major limitation that kept it from being used the way the DS was: human eyes cannot focus on screens at different distances from the eyes. The DS only worked because both screens were right next to each other.

The one thing the Gamepad could do that worked quite well and deserved to be explored more was asymmetric multiplayer. But at the same time, it felt like it was an era too late to be a big deal - giving players separate screens is something we can already do via online multiplayer.

I thought the red meant cherry.

Well, that's literally what the dock is doing. Third party 'dockless docks' exist that act like a USB-C->HDMI adapter.

Plenty of DS games did use 3D graphics though? Like lots of them did? The system's flagship launch title was a remake of Super Mario 64, and launch units included a demo of Metroid Prime Hunters.

But those kinds of 3D games often looked pretty bad on the DS, to the point where lists of the most fondly-remembered DS games will be dominated by the much more beautiful spritework the system was capable of. Or titles that deliberately limited their use of 3D to the point where you're maybe forgetting about them as such.

Just off the top of my head, some titles that did have good looking 3D on the system:

• Animal Crossing: Wild World - Heavily stylized in ways that cover the system's limitations. Low poly looks good here, and flat textures are better than bad textures.

• Rhythm Heaven - Like ACWW, the minigames that use 3D are heavily stylized. And these are mixed in with lots of 2D minigames in the same package, so it doesn't feel like a low-poly game.

• Etrian Odyssey - A good example of limited 3D, only used for the maze exploration. No models, just walls. Combat transitions back to a 2D screen, so that you're focused on the spritework.

• Rune Factory - Like Etrian Odyssey, you're looking at the large 2D portraits accompanying every dialogue box more than you're looking at the 3D. Keeping the farming and combat at a zoomed out and fixed camera angle actually helps to kinda cover it up.

I could name plenty more games that tried to make 3D more of a focal point with detailed models and textures, games that tried to look more like console games, but the point is that the games that did so rarely looked good. Lots more of those existed than I think you remember.

Are they trying to say that $450 is worse than $599? Is that the logic here?

It is less bad than code-in-a-box. That's not a high bar, but it is less bad.

There are two main reasons to buy physical:

Ability to share, trade, and resell your games. These key cards still support this, whereas code-in-a-box did not. So, slightly better.

Then there's the peace of mind that your games will still work in the distant future. I think if you ask most people who primarily buy physical, myself included, we'll say this is the main appeal of physical games, and the big reason why key cards don't feel acceptable.

Some day when the servers eventually go offline, these key cards will become bricks. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. We have no idea how long Nintendo will support them for, and they're not going to hard commit a timetable out loud for us. But we know it can't be forever.

But even for standard physical games, there is some uncertainty regarding their long-term future that I'm not sure people realize. When those servers eventually go online, your cartridge only has 1.0 on it, you won't be able to get patches. That's better than a brick, but for a lot of games that's probably not the version you want to play.

And then the even darker concern is bit rot. No form of physical media is permanent. Every disc and every cartridge will eventually degrade. Worse yet is that for many forms of media, we don't even know how long they're set to last for, we only find out once some of them start to fail. Cartridges are generally better than discs, but beyond that we truly have no idea how long Switch cartridges should be expected to last.

It is still possible to redownloaded previously purchased 3DS and Wii U games, they haven't taken that down yet. You just can't buy anything anymore. They haven't said how long they'll keep that up for, their FAQ simply says "for the foreseeable future", but we know it can't be forever and ever and ever.

Wii downloads went fully offline in 2019, 13 years after the console's launch, or 7 years after the console's successor. I wouldn't try to extrapolate off a single data point though, Switch servers may potentially last longer based on both a longer console life-cycle and a desire to keep backwards compatibility going.

It is less bad than code-in-a-box. That's not a high bar, but it is less bad.

There are two main reasons to buy physical:

Ability to share, trade, and resell your games. These key cards still support this, whereas code-in-a-box did not. So, slightly better.

Then there's the peace of mind that your games will still work in the distant future. I think if you ask most people who primarily buy physical, myself included, we'll say this is the main appeal of physical games, and the big reason why key cards don't feel acceptable.

Some day when the servers eventually go offline, these key cards will become bricks. It's not a question of if, it's a question of when. We have no idea how long Nintendo will support them for, and they're not going to hard commit a timetable out loud for us. But we know it can't be forever.

But even for standard physical games, there is some uncertainty regarding their long-term future that I'm not sure people realize. When those servers eventually go online, your cartridge only has 1.0 on it, you won't be able to get patches. That's better than a brick, but for a lot of games that's probably not the version you want to play.

And then the even darker concern is bit rot. No form of physical media is permanent. Every disc and every cartridge will eventually degrade. Worse yet is that for many forms of media, we don't even know how long they're set to last for, we only find out once some of them start to fail. Cartridges are generally better than discs, but beyond that we truly have no idea how long Switch cartridges should be expected to last.

Who said anything about Windows? What's that have to do with the meme?

Let's imagine—what if the N64 had gotten an "N128" upgrade?

You are describing the 64DD.