Z3RQU4L

Better than last week. Incoming audit at work. Still TBD when. Co-workers on edge. W/e happens happens.

Found a used Wii for decent price. Gonna homebrew it for retro emulation. Native 240p on a CRT should look nice.

Get stuff done Saturday, relax Sunday is the weekend plan.

Have a good one, all!

The problem (or at least my problem) with the suit is that it's over patents for gameplay mechanics - not stolen assets.

If Nintendo/TPC want their pound of flesh from Pocketpair, I'm fine with letting them have it. But please let it be for something they're actually owed.

I'm with you, broadly speaking, but the "how" of it all still bugs me. Nintendo going after Palworld with a patent suit specifically worries me - especially when I can't help but feel (probably naively) that they could absolutely smoke Pocketpair if they upped their game and actually competed.

So the agreement to form Palworld Entertainment was between Pocketpair and two of Sony's non-gaming subsidiaries: Sony Music Entertainment and Aniplex. It's not a game publishing deal or acquisition, but will apparently handle non-gaming Palworld media similar to how TPC currently does for Pokemon.

None of those franchises got into bed with Sony to form Totally-Not-the-Pokemon-Company either, though. Pocketpair did, and a couple months after that is when Nintendo/TPC hit them with the patent infringement suit.

The asset theft is totally scummy, but I don't think it was the suit's main driver.

It absolutely is, but that doesn't make Nintendo/TPC's response to it any better. If slop like Palworld is even vaguely threatening the single biggest media franchise on the planet, that should prompt some serious self-reflection on the big N's part, not lawsuits.

Or at least not *just* lawsuits.

Why make anything else when they can just sue any competition they deem "too uppity" into the ground?

A mashup of the cover arts of GameCube JRPGs "Skies of Arcadia Legends" and "Tales of Symphonia".

After many, *many* years of getting them mixed up, I'm finally trying out the beloved "Plural-Nouns of Something-ia" GameCube JRPG duology.
#Blutoid #SkiesOfArcadia #TalesOfSymphonia

Dubya and his admin were neocons.

Beat *that* series of fights in FFT:TIC. Took Wiegraf down w/classic Tailwind/Chant strats. The next fight ended on my dual-wielding monk's first turn after he decked one of the assassin ladies so hard the boss ended the fight then and there.

Also more PSO and Tales of Graces f co-op w/the Missus.

Whoop whoop!

And a whole liter, too! That's (nominally) two servings.

🧲⁉️

When you put it that way, discounted junk food as a loss leader for insulin actually sounds kinda depressingly plausible.

A two-pack of Twinkies on clearance for $1.49.

Also got some discount Twinkies for your gastronomic pleasure.

Several 1 liter bottles of Faygo Rock & Rye on clearance for 89¢ per bottle.

Room-temperature Faygo, anyone?
#Blutoid

The scramble to prepare for the end of Windows 10 has left me less gaming time than I'd like this week, but I still found some time for Final Fantasy Tactics, Phantasy Star Online, and almost finishing up an explosive-rubber-ducks-only challenge run of Hitman 2016 that I've been putting off forever.

Finally played something (sorta) contemporary this week in Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles. Nice QoL changes (especially to the UI) and some fantastic VA performances help make an already-excellent game even better.

Worth full asking price? Maybe not for most, but I have no regrets.

Nice! Been looking for a place to find one of these for mine. Thanks for including the name of the shop!

The good news is if you have a Mediator use Entice on a wild one and/or rescue a certain named one during an early-ish mission, you can field and breed your own...

...until you inevitably run out of slots in your roster.

I actually did the same thing the other way around not too long ago. I just wanted something for Rare Replay and a few backwards-compats and didn't wanna pay more for the newer console.

My Steam stats for "FINAL FANTASY TACTICS - The Ivalice Chronicles". It coming out on my birthday has given me plenty of time to play it - 10 hours so far.

That's my birthday well-spent. I can't remember the last time before this I actually had a chance to play a game the day it released.
#Blutoid

Mediator. They get to do the absolute silliest things on the battlefield.

Checked out the version 1 Dreamcast release of Phantasy Star Online. It's been pretty much superseded by every re-release of the game that followed it, but it's strangely also got some graphical effects that are exclusive to it.

Also continuing to spam heals in Tales of Graces f co-op w/the Missus.

How now... orange cow?

Lieutenant Dan-approved.

Happy birthday!

(Also damn do I wish SIGN's soundtrack were available on vinyl. Unironically one of the best OSTs for anything ever.)

Rolled credits on Star Fox Adventures. The final boss squandered any goodwill I still had for the game. A multi-phase fight where getting hit by a hard-to-dodge attack sets you back a phase? Get bent.

Also discovered the Missus and I can do co-op in Tales of Graces f about halfway through the game.

Mostly more Star Fox Adventures. The Test of Fear was actually pretty great - a unique sorta extended QTE-esque segment and the definite standout in an otherwise kinda derivative game. It's just too bad that it's back to the same-old same-old after you've finished it.

Closing in on the homestretch.

About halfway through Star Fox Adventures now by the game's estimation. Still a kinda mediocre Zelda clone. The apparently quite polarizing "Test of Fear" is coming up soon.

Also got Duck Hunt running on the NES after some tinkering. Surprised by how genuinely good the Zapper still feels to use.