missingno

Currently a Galaxy S9+. Battery life isn't the best anymore, and I'm running low on internal storage, but it's still serving me well. I'm not even sure what I'd upgrade to, I really need the SD slot that almost nothing new has anymore.

Best was my old Motorola Droid 2, I miss slide-out keyboards so damn badly.

Unlike the Gamecube and Xbox, which used DVD-like discs but just weren't licensed as DVD players (though Xbox later sold a "DVD Playback Kit" meant to cover licensing fees), Dreamcast's GD-ROMs were closely based on standard Compact Disc technology, just with dual-layer discs.

Upgrading the hardware would've increased costs considerably, GD-ROMs were meant to be a lot cheaper than the still very new DVD technology. Tech that did get cheaper by the time the PS2 hit the market nearly two years later, but Sega wanted to be early.

Chess.

For most games, it's not difficult to make AI that can absolutely destroy humans. But it turns out to be very difficult to make AI that feels like a fun and engaging challenge to a human. Hardest of all is making AI that realistically plays like a human does.

The slowdown problems you experienced may be relegated to the Switch version, because...it's the Switch.

It's a 2D puzzle game. It's not doing anything the Switch shouldn't be able to handle. Champions never had any problems. Even the Wii was perfectly capable of running 20th, and not much has actually changed since then.

Like, I know the Switch is not the beefiest system ever, but this is not a game that should need a PS5 Pro or whatever.

You may not like playing against bots, but you'd also hate playing against absolutely no one.

That's the current state of every platform but Switch.

I'm well aware that crossplay isn't trivial, but it's too important to not be a priority. If you're making a multiplayer game and you want it to have a playerbase, crossplay is vital to keep your game alive. A publisher the size of Sega has the resources to get it done.

I don't know that some new game is going to solve the player acquisition problem without a new gimmick.

Does simply being content-complete count as a gimmick? It's something we still haven't seen yet in the west. I think 20th and Chronicle had a ton of great things to offer new players. Chronicle's JRPG story mode might be the most innovative onboarding experience any puzzle game has ever seen.

Too bad the west never saw it.

$1.80, that's what cost.

PSN Plus is $80/year, XBox Live is $60/year. And both of those are for the lowest tier.

Similar tech, sure, but the point is how they use this technology to play a character onstream.

You can consider it a subcategory of streamer. Livestreaming is all about your public face and persona, it's a lot more front and center than just an icon off to the side here, so someone choosing to present themselves as a character matters a lot. And for many VTubers, they literally are playing a character onstream, there's an entire subculture surrounding VTuber personas.

It's just kinda cute to see Bernie learn about this whole subculture like this.

Under Night In-Birth II: [Sys:Celes] - 1-2 at locals. Bracket was stacked, I was going to lose to both of those players either way, but I feel like I choked a lot harder than I should've.

Super Mario Party Jamboree - Just for shits and giggles, local attempted to run a bracket for this. Started an hour and a half behind schedule, and apparently this game is even slower than previous Mario Parties already were. Took several hours to finish two games and make top 6, lose the tiebreak to not make finals, and get to go home as my consolation prize. Those two games were pretty wild though, stole game 1 through Chance Time and for game 2 we all held onto Boo Bells for the entire game, loaded guns pointed at each other waiting to see who will fire the first shot.

Skullgirls, Vampire Savior - Tonight's locals are gonna be a Halloween themed bracket, so I'm getting back on my SG grind and derusting a bit for VSav.

Riichi Mahjong - Walked a friend through some basic lessons via Clubhouse Games. Don't know how much of it they fully understood just yet though.

Also finally finished that big secret project I've had in the works, planning to publish something this weekend~

Streamers who use an animated model (or 2D PNG for the latter) instead of an IRL face camera.

Is "don't suffer major depression" supposed to be useful advice?

$20/year for Nintendo Switch Online. That's $20 more than it should be, but at least it's not nearly as expensive as the other consoles.