I love and hate the feeling in Animal Crossing that the world has just continued existing without you for the last 18 months that you haven’t booted it up. Feels like visiting old friends… but old friends that thought you were dead or something.

Yeah, it really was amazing to play blind. We especially enjoyed the DLC… when we first realised what it was all about, it nearly blew our minds!

I use it for work. Other than having to think for a second to find weirdly hidden menu items, it’s fine. At least for my purposes, as a .NET dev. One thing I love about it is Windows Sandbox… really wish Linux would could up something similar.

It’s interesting how far Linux desktop has progressed recently… I don’t hate Windows, in fact I think it’s a great OS for most purposes. But I happened to try Linux Mint a few years ago in a fit of pique about being excluded from the Win11 upgrade for spurious reasons… and it just kind of stuck.

Two years later and I am full on Linux now. Don’t even have a Windows partition (though I do keep a VM). And I’m about to buy a new laptop that I intend to buy without an OS, it will never be touched by Windows, there’s just no need.

For my purposes, Linux does everything now. OS, software, the games I want to play… I never even think about it. Also, everywhere I look, I see Linux - my Steamdeck, my MiSTer, my Pis, my Miyoo Mini. It’s everywhere…

Yeah, I believe there was an MSDOS port, I just didn’t have the set up to play it. From YouTube, it looks similar to the Amiga version.

Hah! I seem to remember that R-Type DX on the Color was really good, wasn’t it?

Yeah, it’s incredible! The only thing that lets it down slightly is the vertical scrolling (and the fact that they split the levels on two separate releases - I think the TGX16 version got them all in one).

I mean, the arcade is clearly the best version… (if you’re talking the original game).

For the ports… the Spectrum is great for sheer chutzpah, but the PC Engine port is probably the most faithful of all the versions that weren’t running an emulator. The Sega Mastersystem is also extremely good, on much less powerful hardware.

Also, the coders who ported these games often wouldn’t have access to the arcade cabinets at all, other than some hastily recorded VHS footage. So getting a port that actually felt like the original was a rare treat. Most of the time the ports felt like they were inspired by the source material more than anything.

I got the Miyoo Mini Plus a few months ago, and I really love it. They’re really lovely devices for just whipping out for a quick game of Tetris, especially with the convenience of the game switcher and save states. I’ve been surprised by how usable it is, despite the small size.