Iirc moonie also quoted legal statue and stuff on his video but was rebuked my Karl as well

Yeah, that’s why I’m planning to look into whether that was a screw up or not, thanks for the link too.

I’m familiar with HBG but it’s always good to mention him.

Yes, it is insane. That case is also a great showcase of how trying to make example out of a single guy doesn’t really work since, as you mentioned, rest of the team is still doing their thing.

I’d like to think (well, hope anyway) that no one looks at Bowser’s story and thinks “yeah, that’s a reasonable conclusion”.

Oh no, I completely agree no one should be completely screwed over piracy. Just wanted to add some context as I saw a lot of discussion about him ending with “poor innocent dude” without digging into details. That’s all.

Nintendo has a lot of problems that should absolutely be called out. I hope me trying to add more details didn’t imply otherwise.

No idea, I’m only familiar with some of his videos so can’t say one way or another. Is there any place I could read about it?

Edit: Also, I believe the video I mentioned has links to specific legal documents surrounding this case so it should be easy to fact check. Still, I’m not trying to whitewash the situation you wrote about would love to learn more if it happened.

Edit 2: A’ight, while I didn’t have time for a deep dive I did manage to confirm that situation happened.

I sucks since the videos I’ve seen seemed reasonably researched and now I’m wondering whether that was a one-time screw up or a normal thing that simply wasn’t caught more often. Guess I’ll try to look into it more when I’m free.

As much as I dislike Nintendo and wish Yuzu devs all the best I’d like to point out that Bowser wasn’t some innocent guy who was caught by big bad company - Moonie has a video that goes into specifics about his involvement with a pirate enterprise worth a shitton of money.

Other than that yeah, I hope they can survive this situation. I wonder if Ryujinx devs are next.

I probably can’t help with the hardware part but want to clarify just in case:

• are you looking for an officially licensed one or just anything? I’m guessing the latter based on the “cheap” requirement?
• are you looking for a gift or just a way for her to play those games?
• if it’s the latter, does she have a smartphone? any budget phone will easily handle this kind of emulation so she could just use that

I’d agree about P3R if not for the fact that despite remaking the game Atlus still couldn’t be bothered to make a definitive edition of P3.

Besides that, you could also argue P3P doesn’t really belong here due to being available on Steam but the question was about our favorite games played on an emulator and PSP version is what I’m playing right as I’m typing this :P

Parasite Eve is great, isn’t it? I wish we got more RPGs like this set in modern times.

I don’t expect anything will come out this but I really appreciate Ross trying to give it an honest shot. I can’t help since I don’t own the game but I can at least cheer from the sidelines an lend my power for a spirit bomb.

Go Ross Go!

I’ve been using emulation pretty much since I started playing games. It’s actually one of the main reasons gaming became my passion (and eventually major money drain).

My favorite thing? I don’t have to shuffle different devices to play everything I want - it’s even more importent now, since I have a Steam Deck and can have all of them on the go again.

Here’s a short list of titles I love that don’t show up too often in threads like this one:

• Tetris DX (GBC / mGBA)
• Fantasy Golf Pangya (PSP / PPSSPP)
• Persona 3 Portable (PSP / PPSSPP) - just started NG+ with female protagonist
• Puzzle Quest - Challenge of the Warlords (PSP / PPSSPP)
• Ridge Racer 2 (PSP / PPSSPP)
• Parasite EVE (PSX / DuckStation)
• Captain Toad Tresure Tracker (Switch / Yuzu)

I’m not going to dump my whole library here but these are fun and rare enough worth mention.

No problem, hope you have fun with it!

This ended up way more rambly than intended but hopefully will be of some help. I might clean things up a bit if I have some time later.

Drakengard

First game is a bad Dynasty Warriors clone and can be a really rough experience.
It has very repetitive gameplay and pretty much requires the use of a guide if you want to get the true ending due to things like “get to this already cleared part of the map at this specific time” if I recall correctly. Final boss is… an experience.

It has a great story (with ending E being a direct connection to Nier Gestalt/Replicant), though depending on how resistant you are to the monotony and jank, getting there might be a challenge. There are some absolutely bonkers ideas here, beyond anything you’ll find in later games and that’s honestly the biggest draw for this title.

Finally there’s music. Oh boy, the music. It sounds like a cacophony of a madman and not in an enjoyable way. Don’t expect anything like Nier OSTs.

All in all, don’t feel bad about switching to/going with an LP - this text one by The Dark Id is a classic, with everything you could want (it’s pretty much a play-by-play, with lots of screenshots and music, just without the tedium).

Drakengard 2

Main thing to keep in mind is that this game is kind of its’ own thing and one I remember the least about.

Taro had no involvement beyond helping with a few CG cutscenes and the producer (I think?) of the first game had only a limited power over the development. Because of this writing can be a bit more generic and flat.
It’s not all bad and story has some connections to the first game but it was intended to be a more streamlined experience.

Gameplay is mostly improved but has some issues, like certain bosses requiring specific weapons (you can beat them otherwise but they’ll require a lot of hits).
Play it if you really want to complete the collection but it’s not necessary to experience the “main” series.

Drakengard 3

This one is technically a prequel to all the other games.

Yoko Taro is back in the writer’s seat for this one and the overall story is better than D2 in my opinion. I already mentioned the humor in this one - it can be a bit crude and vulgar so your enjoyment of those parts will depend on how well it clicks with you.
Story has the usual Taro flair and can be further enhanced with the DLC which expands on each of the antagonists (I don’t know how easy it is to get these days).

It’s not a great game from a technical perspective - it runs like garbage on the original hardware (framerate can fall to single digits at times) and can look a bit dated even compared to other games from 2013. Some of it can be improved with emulation but I’m not sure to what extent.

Gameplay is further improved (there’s still a lot of jank) and way easier to fully complete so there’s that. If you survived the original Nier you should be fine.

It can be an interesting experience if you like stories by Yoko Taro, just don’t expect a good game (this sentiment can be extended to all pre-Nier Automata games to various extent).

If you’re looking for something relaxing there’s Afrika - a photography game with a (light?) sim focus.

If you’re fine with kind of mediocre gameplay, rough performance and interesting writing: Drakengard 3. The occasional humor may or may not be your cup of tea but the overall story is worth it - it does require replaying stages and some grinding if you want to reach the true ending however.

I checked out the demo and you can actually select one of the few speed settings in the options menu. Some of them felt pretty fast but I’m not an expert on racers so you might want to check out the demo to see if any of them gets close to what you’re looking for.

This controversy was actually how I found out about the classic XCOM (I may have heard about it before but never really looked into the series before that).

Truth be told, the whole thing could’ve been avoided if not for 2K’s lack of foresight - not only they decided to call the game XCOM but also Enemy Unknown was already in production when they revealed the FPS version. All they had to do was let people know it wasn’t the only project in the pipeline (though lack of such announcement may have been caused by the development issues with EU at the time).

The big part of the initial reactions had to do with the fact that Enemy Unknown wasn’t announced at the time so people were worried series will move in a completely new direction (anybody remembers Close Combat: First to Fight?).

The other issue (post release) was how different it was from what we’ve seen initially - it was suppose to be set in 1950’s, have first-person perspective, open-ended levels, info gathering, research and horror vibes (check this trailer and this gameplay).

By release that game turned into a third-person shooter with simpler, more linear levels, no research of alien technology and other streamlining measures. That doesn’t mean the final product is bad (I enjoyed it quite a bit and the “twist” near the end was a pretty neat addition), it just didn’t live up to the expectations and slowly fell into relative obscurity.

All in all I agree, play The Bureau if you want a different take on the XCOM universe. It’s a decent game.

Just wanted to mention that just like with any other F2P games, there are gacha titles that are fun without paying anything. Not as many as the predatory kind but still.

My point is that however you feel about microtransactions they are successful and that’s why they’re so common.

With subscription services you and me can think “I want to own it and play whenever” but a lot (not only casual) players see it as “I pay a few $ and get access to a huge library of games I can try out for the next month”.

As I wrote initially, just because more dedicated audience doesn’t like the direction industry is moving in doesn’t mean majority will care enough to stop it.

As much as I agree with his sentiment, this title is bullshit - he never wrote “gamers don’t want subscriptions” but that they shouldn’t want that due to where it might lead.

“Gamers” aren’t some hivemind entity that wants a specific thing. Many people don’t worry whether an idea pushed by the publishers will have a long term negative effect on the industry, they just want to have fun with their hobby.

Look at microtransactions - there’s a lot of negative discussion about them and yet they bring huge amounts of money, who’s to say if the same won’t happen with subscription services? We might not like it but majority doesn’t necessarily care.

Sorry for being pedantic about a title but third-parties changing someone’s words is a bit of a pet peeve of mine.

I think it’s just a reference to a bit in the chapter.

Oh, totally. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.

Personally I’d love to see a new take on Daggerfall using AI for features you mentioned (though it would have to be an “all in” affair as Bethesda’s approach to randomly generated content these days is… not particularly impressive).