Good

Yeah, I still hum that Bomb the Bass track at random times.

The Bitmaps just made hit after hit, and Xenon 2 was the first I got to play.

Xenon 2 Megablast for the Atari ST, with my saved-up pre-teen pocket money. Was it worth it? Fuck yes.

Banger of a game

But once you make the wrong noises about something, plenty of people show up ready to prove just how mean and horrible they can actually be.

This is true. Linux isn’t my platform of choice, and the “passion” of the responses that provokes is remarkable.

I’ve been playing this the last few days too. I got the game on the Switch for the kids during lockdown and it became an instant favourite with them, but it was disappointing that you could only have one profile that had their own island.

Several years later, we’ve all got MacBooks, and I have been messing about with emulation. There’s a particular emulator that Nintendo killed but forks are still maintained that run incredibly well on Macs. This past weekend saw the three of us reminiscing, each finally with our own island.

I reckon it’s also because there are simply so many games available now, and countless devices to play them on. My generation had one console or computer max, and a handful of games. Now young gamers have half a dozen devices at home, and thousands of free or easily accessible titles on whatever platform is currently in reach. They don’t need to commit to a couple of titles, when an advert for the next one is a tap away.

I mentioned this before on another post, but I had 5 games on my PS1 as a kid. There are currently over 400 owned games available on the living room Xbox, there’s a Switch in the house, the kids have iPhones, iPads and laptops, there’s a Quest 2 gathering dust etc etc. That attachment we had to one or two of the few games we owned as kids has to be in part down to accessibility.

Ha yeah, very good point. Reminds me of Lego. The entertainment is mostly in the building. Once complete, it’s mostly untouched.

I had a similar Ubuntu experience in the Windows XP years too (2006ish?).

Everything had a barrier. WiFi drivers always seemed to be a problem, but if I wanted to do anything non-standard it was an exercise in frustration. At one point I owned a Sony digital camcorder that I wanted to get video files from. Eventually, following hours of forum research I learned I had to recompile the kernel to do it, which did actually get me there. To this day I have no idea what a kernel is, and I have no desire to. I remember thinking how wildly complex it was to do something that worked so easily in Windows.

Entirely off topic and potentially triggering anecdote when accounting for Linux’s general prevalence here, but that wasn’t what turned me back to Windows from Ubuntu 20 years ago, it was actually something that most would could consider a positive for Linux. It was the fact that it was so customisable. I had weird multiple desktops that were mapped to a rotatable cube, I spent ages configuring translucent live performance stats on the desktop, hours updating icons and themes etc, whatever I saw on forums that looked cool and wanted to replicate.

Then one day I acknowledged I just wasn’t ever actually using the computer. I literally spent more time modifying and customising stuff than I did actually doing anything. I realised I was never satisfied with the current config and just kept tweaking.

It’s probably not surprising to hear I’ve since been fully into the almost entirely un-customisable Apple ecosystem for a while now. While it’s taken my money, it’s given me back my time!

Absolutely wild that there was a time when Microsoft had three generally well regarded consumer products in Windows 7, the Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 all at the same time, compared to where they are now in all of those product spaces.

Windows was Windows, but 7 was largely consistent and didn’t need to be fought with like its successors.

The 360 was the go-to console for developers and gamers, despite the RROD issues, which I’d even give them credit for for handling (eventually) after lots of us got 2 free games and a free controller from them following the debacle.

Windows Phone 7 had a superb interface, great hardware and genuinely stood out.

Now they have nothing and are hated more than ever.

That was part of Microsoft’s pitch - they wanted it to be the central device. I was in the minority that thought it was a great idea at the time, but then I’d been running a dedicated Windows Media Center PC under the TV for years until that point, so to me it was a shinier upgrade.

Exactly that. The Xbox One came with HDMI in and HDMI out.

That and the one thing I thought was awesome - split screen TV so I could play a game and have a live football match or something on part of the screen. That was amazing at the time, I was gutted when they killed it off to get more resources for games.

My kids were like 3 and 5 when Kinect was released and they bloody loved it. Also Dance Central was superb for drunken adults.

Plus if Alien Isolation wasn’t scary enough already, a Kinect would dial it up a notch.

Definitely limited appeal and the tracking wasn’t great on the 360 version, but for those first two scenarios (younger kids and late night dancing) it was a superb party game.

Can’t relate

Goddammit, I loved that game too!

X-Wing

Tie Fighter

X-Wing Alliance

Star Wars: KOTOR

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King

Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor

Hogwarts Legacy

The Thing

Aladdin

Blade Runner

And these are just a few off the top of my head that I’ve played.

Although to be fair, I guess we could just as easily reel off a list of garbage equivalents, but I think the throwaway that licensed games suck is a misconception.

I can highly recommend this if you’re any kind of Indy fan. It masterfully replicates the globetrotting adventure vibe and swashbuckling fighting of the movies, and Indy’s voice actor absolutely nails it.

If this releases with full support for existing Xbox libraries as suggested, this would be the absolute perfect device for my household, where we’ve accrued literally hundreds of Xbox games since 2001, and would love to open up to PC games from a device in the living room. For me, it’s the best of both. That said, it’s still dependent on avoiding exorbitant pricing.

I know the tennis protestors made quite the racket