BirdObserver

@BirdObserver@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Virtual Boy: Nintendo Classics - Announcement Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Like everyone else here, I’ve got no love for Nintendo’s business practices, but the owner of the software having officially endorsed ways of playing their stuff on modern devices (let alone replications of original hardware, like with their old controller releases) has basically always been a good thing, both for average Joe consumer that’s interested in game history and doesn’t know what a ROM is, and for the emulation community who wouldn’t ever pay for this stuff but can often build off the tech (or educate us on the problems with it). Is any of this the ideal? Of course not, locking ancient games being a subscription is typical megacorp horseshit. But a kid being able to pick up a brand new Switch 2 and play Game Boy Arkanoid and Virtual Boy Teleroboxer on it is something.

  Art of all forms shouldn’t be virtually inaccessible to the masses outside of methods of questionable legality (although, make no mistake, I think those methods are good too, and these things can coexist).

  Whether or not the games are objectively “good” or popular is totally beside the point. Just because I can easily download a pirated version of some forgotten 80’s b-movie doesn’t mean it’s not a good thing when it finds some form of new life through an overpriced official boutique blu-ray release.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Virtual Boy: Nintendo Classics - Announcement Trailer⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩:

  Wario Land is still a really great game on it even today that doesn’t deserve to be locked on flawed hardware (the motherboard disconnects one of the lenses over time and it’s a pain to repair), and Red Alert is one of those games in which the limitations actually, probably accidentally, give it a really unique hypnotic style, and the dual gamepad controls (also used to nice effect in Teleroboxer) ensured it didn’t just feel like a regular Nintendo game of the time. I don’t doubt it inspired actual classics like Rez.

  I get the hate for the Virtual Boy - most games on it barely feel complete, it was uncomfortable to use, it made your pupils dilate - but it is a fun and important piece of weird gaming history, and Nintendo acknowledging it as such and finally officially allowing people some way to play those games again (knowing full well it’s going to get a lot of hate) is still a good thing overall for classic game preservation.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Nintendo Announces Free Switch 1 Games Upgrades for Switch 2⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It would be, if this wasn’t passing off old news from right after the Switch 2’s big reveal trailer as something new: ign.com/…/nintendo-switch-games-free-switch-2-upg…

  (The games that weren’t free to upgrade then still aren’t now).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sketchy social media post gives BlackBerry fans hope for the return of the smartphone brand⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I know we hate Reddit here but this site is just taken from and rephrasing this post, which is more informative (which at least they were nice enough to link to): reddit.com/…/a_startup_is_bringing_back_an_update…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Kindle Is Making It Harder to Switch to Rival eReader Brands.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It’ll break saving books you bought from Amazon, but you’ll still be able to send books you got from other places to it from Calibre. Fortunately barely any of my ebooks on my kindle are from Amazon (though my next ereader isn’t going to be a kindle, that’s for sure).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨LG discontinues all UHD Blu-ray and Blu-ray players⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  4K discs are so niche that this just isn’t really true, since they simply don’t bother to add that stuff. Almost every 4K disc I have just loads right into a bland generic menu with only a skippable logo for universal or whatever at the beginning. On top of that, they’re all region free.

  Now most of these 4K discs come with a regular (often older) Blu-ray which contains the features from previous releases or whatever, and THAT’S where the bullshit you’re talking about is - lots of trailers (with it being a crapshoot whether you can skip straight to the menu, need to skip one at a time, or have to actually fast forward them), and, worst of all, defunct BD-Live stuff that in some cases you have no way to skip loading at all, even if you completely disable network connectivity in the player.

  But yeah, modern 4K discs are mostly great and still absolutely way better video and audio quality than any streaming service I’ve used - the worst thing you usually get is maybe one dumb copyright notice. (LG’s 4K players were terrible anyway though making the experience bad for consumers for a different reason, but that’s for another comment).