• 0 Posts
  • 61 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 29th, 2023

help-circle

  • I would suggest redirecting slightly. Every single publicly traded tech company eventually fully enshittifies into predatory ad/data revenue generation due to the fundamental requirement that they not only generate profit, but that they consistently generate growth.

    I could create an amazing app, sell it for $5, and if 5 million people download it and I don’t sell out or incorporate and go public, I could just cruise on it and retire happily. There’s no intrinsic pressure to switch profit models because I don’t owe anybody shit.










  • Some additional deeper cuts:

    • Trap Gunner - because sending your friend on a trip around the entire level into a nest of bombs and mines never gets old.
    • Syphon Filter - because, how about… the taser? (The commercial is for 2, but the first one has a better taser… trust me.)
    • The Unholy War - because it‘s basically chess but with flying bladebots and chompy little toothbastards.
    • Die Hard Trilogy - because it’s 3 games and one of them is inexplicably one of the better light gun games ever made.
    • Ghost in the Shell - because find me another game where you drive a tank that climbs walls.
    • Return Fire - because if playing Capture the Flag with military vehicles while listening to classical music isn’t a good time, I don’t know what is.
    • Star Ocean: The Second Story - because an epic JRPG with 86 possible endings and dozens of different skills like Musicianship, Blacksmithing, Cooking, and Publishing most certainly is not overkill.
    • Blast Chamber - because all sports would be better if they were played in a room where you can rotate gravity.
    • Future Cop LAPD - because sometimes I’m just tired of conserving my ammo.
    • N2O: Nitrous Oxide - because 90’s techno and lasers.


    • Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - because it’s literally one of the best games ever made. So good that when it borrowed the Metroid formula pretty much wholesale, they renamed the formula Metroidvania.
    • Metal Gear Solid - because it sits in the Goldilocks zone of Kojima-ness. Nutty but not impenetrable.
    • Silent Hill - because everyone should know what it’s like for seventeen pixels to make them shit themselves in fear.
    • Metal of Honor - because Call of Duty used to be the whippersnapper upstart. Know your roots, son.
    • Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 - because there were THPS games with more, but there were never THPS games that were definitively better.
    • Resident Evil 2 - because hitting your stride while defining a genre is a beautiful thing.
    • Valkyrie Profile - because the world is ending but I really want this mermaid to be happy…
    • Fear Effect - because it’s a seven hour game across four CDs but my best friend and I couldn’t put it down until we finished it on day one.
    • Vigilante 8 - because they out-Twisted-Metaled Twisted Metal.
    • G-Darius - because sometimes you just gotta blast a giant robot fish in the face with a screen-filling laser beam.
    • Incredible Crisis - because we all have bad days.
    • Tenchu - because Solid Snake shouldn’t be the only one who gets to have fun sneaking around and killing people.
    • Rakugaki Showtime - because before there was Smash Bros, there was bashing the Smiley Ball for super moves and launching ICBMs against your foes.







  • A coat pocket can handle all kinds of things. The Retroid Pocket 5 is very popular, has a lot of power to emulate up to Dreamcast and even PS2 generation consoles, and runs Android so it’s incredibly flexible. It’s very Vita-like in form factor and will probably be a solid Anything Device. It’s pricey, but it’s a real One and Done machine.

    Myself though, I’m partial to the TrimUI Model S (also rebranded as the Powkiddy A66) and the TrimUI Smart. They are older, far less powerful, and lack L2/R2 buttons and analog sticks so you’ll mostly want to stick to pre-PlayStation for the most part, but they’re insanely pocketable. Plus they can be had rather cheaply, so they’re a pretty easy impulse treat.

    EDIT: seeing elsewhere that your budget is closer to $100, you might look at anything RG__XX__ from Anbernic. The RG35XXSP (rolls right off the tongue) is much loved because it’s exactly like a slightly chonky GBA SP. Performance tops out just north of the PlayStation 1 generation, but the price is well within your budget.