cerebralhawks

Final Fantasy 7 on PS2. They published the intro movie re-imagined using the PS2's capabilities. Later they laughed it off and said it was just a tech demo. Later beyond that they said they felt they should not capitalise on FF7 by remaking it until they could release a newer FF game they were proud of enough to not need FF7 to support the company (newer FF games should do that on their own). The FF7 remake was later broken into 3 parts (2 have released so far) for the PS4 and PS5, with an Xbox release on the way.

As for the Amiga (mentioned by OP), that computer was more capable than the IBM/clones and Apple computers of its day. Bill Gates (Microsoft cofounder) once said you need 8MB of RAM for multitasking, but the Amiga did it with 256K (and also with 512KB if you had the memory expander), though some argued Amiga did not do true multitasking. The Amiga was in the 1980s what the Mac is today, a computer for artists and creators.

Also, obligatory Half-Life 3. The issue there is, Valve decided it was more profitable to sell other people's games and make money off the backs of others rather than develop their own games. At this point I don't even want HL3. HL2 built such strong momentum, and it spawned two expansions that were mostly good. And then of course Portal, and arguably, The Stanley Parable (game that started as a HL2 mod). I don't think a HL3 based on how games are now would be as popular as some people think. And if it were based more on HL2 gameplay, I don't think it would sell very well today. Same reason we don't have Deus Ex anymore. The Deus Ex formula got pretty diluted with the latest entry, Mankind Divided, and that was almost 10 years ago? Now if you want the Deus Ex gameplay, you kinda have to go for something like Cyberpunk. DX elements plus some GTA stuff.

Honestly every Robin Hood since Prince of Thieves (34 years ago!) has sucked... with the possible exception of Men in Tights (which was a parody of Prince of Thieves/the Robin Hood legend in general). I guess the one with Taron Eggerton was okay... but it wasn't very memorable.

That said, I do love a good Robin Hood story so I'm in for this. Interesting to see it done as a series. Now do the same for Count of Monte Cristo (again my favorite was the Kevin Reynolds one, but the others have been better... even the anime).

Clever girl. Stephen King said the same thing about Under the Dome. Under the Dome sucked, by the way. The show. The book was okay but had a dumb ending. Still a good book. Stephen King often bumbles the endings. It's fine, the journey makes a lousy destination worth it.

I wish the game were loved enough by its creators to get releases on PC, Mac, and Xbox. Being exclusive to a platform I don't have means I can't play it. Though, I do have a PS3 and I think TLOU 1 is on that. I might even have it. I haven't turned on the PS3 in so long. Nothing against it, I liked it more than the 360 and XB1 (though, not more than the XSX), just haven't been into serious gaming in so long. Anyway, I'm sure she's talking about TLOU2 which was only on PS4/PS5 IIRC; seasons 2 and 3 are based on it and that game wasn't as popular as the first one. (IMO it's because Ellie let horny teenage boys down by coming out as gay; I think a lot of people were shipping her with guys, some even with Joel, which is all kinds of wrong (he's 3x her age and she's like 16 in the first game?). I've seen art, but whatever. I liked the first season. I also like Bella Ramsey, would watch her in just about anything. She won me over as that sassy Stark ally in Game of Thrones.

Like Nick Offerman (Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation), Rainn Wilson is probably just playing himself in the show. Both of those shows are famous for their "non-acting" where people just kinda be themselves (and often share their character name with their RL name). They're very literal about being workplace drama. These people just be themselves and that entertains us. A couple of them are comedians, but for the most part, they're just cool and/or quirky people who play well together.

Borderlands. The first one. The game is amazing by yourself and slightly better with friends. It's not meant to be worse either way. It's just a lot of fun.

The later BL games were made the same way, but I haven't found any of the sequels (/"Pre-Sequel") to be as engaging as the original. They are bigger and more ambitious, though, with BL2 being a fan favorite. I just really like the Soldier (Roland) from the first game. The other games don't have a character I like playing as much as him, so I'd rather join the original rather than settle for a lesser character.

Actually, the best co-op game is Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. It's played with your left hand and your right hand. I'm being a bit of a smartass, but technically it does qualify as co-op because two characters on the screen are being independently controlled and they must work together. But it is specifically designed to be played by one person. Your dominant hand should control the older brother, with the analog stick moving him and either trigger doing the action, whatever that may be (it's basically a one-button game, plus the stick). Your other hand controls the younger brother, same thing. So naturally the older brother runs straight and does what you expect but the little brother tends to stumble and waver. All intentional. Also, don't bother with the remake. It breaks a few things and honestly doesn't look much better. Different art style, not better. Just play the original. You can get it on GOG on sale all the time for like $2-3. Also, it'll take ~4 hours to complete and you'll probably never want to play it again (but recommend it to everyone). I actually bought the remake (mistake) and had my wife play it. For the hell of it, I speed ran both of them (this was on Xbox) for the achievements. Then I did the same on the original. Interestingly, you do not have to complete the game to get all the achievements! You don't even have to complete the final fight, or do the climactic scene before the final fight. Before you're even aware the climactic scene is coming, you sit on a bench and blip, there's the last achievement, if you're doing an Achievement% run, that's when you call time. (I'm not a competitive speed runner. I just did the runs to pop the achievements before uninstalling them.)

I love how everyone dumped on the Switch 2's pricing when it was announced (not here — this was on another site/community) but as soon as it launched, the sales numbers exceeded expectations.

Honestly Nintendo didn't price it high enough — it was clearly not priced as high as the market would bear. It's making such good sales because people consider it to be a solid value for what they expect to get out of it.

If I hadn't just gotten a Switch 1 (OLED) 9 months prior, I might have gotten one. As it is, it's a minor upgrade and I see no reason to upgrade at this point. But a lot of people are.

Fortunately, the game I play, Animal Crossing, isn't hard coded to the Switch's limitations. I think it was always meant to be used on an upgraded console. Playing it on PC/Mac, people have gotten it up to 8K without modifying the game in any way, just running it on a more capable machine. (Macs are particularly good for emulating Switch as they both use the ARM64 platform, like your phone probably does. PCs do tend to have more powerful GPUs, so they can mitigate the additional emulation, not just going from Switch to Windows, but from ARM64 to x86-64. But Macs are already halfway there.) I can't do 8K... my monitor and my MacBook both do 1440p though, which is 4X the Switch 1's native 720p. It doesn't look that much better (the textures are optimised for 720p) but it does perform better. Loading times zip by. If there's a Switch 3 and it does 4K and it still has backward compatibility to Switch 1, I imagine Animal Crossing will do similarly well on that. Though, I kind of hope they make a new Animal Crossing title entirely.

Look up some scalper listings. No one's making money scalping the Switch 2. Nintendo has met the demand with supply. It's not like the XSX and PS5 where people were buying them up and selling them for twice as much. Scalpers now are just trying to break even. You might almost feel sorry for them.

If it aims to please a vast audience and it succeeds, then that means more people are happy.

The opposite is a film aimed at a very specific niche.

The best movie I've seen is the Japanese film 君の名は。. It's (maybe) not for everybody. It is somewhat popular (a bit more so when it was new, 9 years ago), people know what it is, I'm pretty sure it's in the IMDb Top 250, it's one of those movies everyone should see at some point, but most people wouldn't Top 10 it. I like movies with certain elements that appeal to me, and some of the movies I like, "most people" don't. Like maybe if they gave it a chance they'd like it, but they wouldn't watch it. The algorithm wouldn't recommend it to them. And niche films keep getting made by studios like A24 and Blumhouse that give creators more control. But anyway, I also like KPop Demon Hunters, which is like, the #1 movie right now. I recognise it's a formulaic movie. I see the formulae. I still bop to "Soda Pop" and "What it Sounds Like" along with the kids, teenagers, and millions of other people who made it the top film. I listen to the songs in my car, and at home. I was one of the ones in the theater watching it last week, but I did not sing along, I was just there to enjoy it on a bigger screen.

There's nothing wrong with liking popular movies, or movies that are marketed to you. There's nothing wrong with marketing working, doing its job, serving its intended purpose.

It's only wrong if you can't find movies that nobody else but you (and a few others like you scattered around the world) like.

(P.S. I'm not trying to be obtuse, or a smartass. 君の名は。 is called "your name." outside of Japan. I simply prefer to use the original title as a personal choice, and I can pronounce it correctly as well (something like "key-me no nye-wah." The literal translation is "what's your name?" which is where the international title comes from. I also prefer to watch it in Japanese without subtitles, despite it being fully translated to English as an option. I don't know Japanese. I've just seen it enough to know exactly what's going on at all times.)

Oh — I meant strictly for health reasons. Guess I got a bit off-topic there.

But yeah, starch breaks down to sugar and we don't need more of that. I do love my corn (maize) tortillas for wrapping up meat and vegetables though!

You know what I find deplorable? Spyware as a feature. Like Android.

Also, Google bypasses ad blockers. Say you have an iPhone, or an unrooted Android phone. You're blocking ads? You're using DNS to do it. The Google app, and Google apps in general, ignore the system DNS settings and use Google's own DNS. There are some good reasons they do it, but the chief upshot for Google is, they get to inject ads into a device whose owner explicitly tries to block them. Since ads can also carry malware/ransomware, Google is intentionally opening a security hole in a device you may not be able to 100% secure, but could be fairly secure. Relatively secure. For a smartphone.

I actually got ransomware on a popular Android blog through an ad they served. I'd just wiped my phone — this was the last Android phone I'd owned. So I mean, I'd wiped the internal ROM. Repartitioned it, installed a recovery (TWRP, naturally), and then flashed a custom OS. Back then, you couldn't get stock Android on a national carrier in the US. So, I was flashing a European CFW customised with the CDMA radios that the US was using at the time (we're all GSM now like the rest of the world, I think the last CDMA towers, which were 3G, have been shut down but I'm not sure — Sprint and US Cellular were CDMA and they're both part of T-Mobile, and Verizon was the big one and they're all on the GSM tech now). Anyway, I hadn't installed AdAway yet, I was just reading tech blogs, when my screen went red, said illegal content was detected on my device, pay "the FBI" so many thousand dollars in Bitcoin to unlock my device. I laughed, wiped the internal ROM again and started over... installing AdAway before going out to the open web. Lesson learned. But that's the kind of thing Google intentionally opens its users up to by tunneling around the ad blocker. (I don't name the tech blog because I contacted them and they were very helpful in identifying the source of the ransomware attacks and getting that advertiser de-listed. So there is no reason to "name and shame." But it can happen to anyone, and without even going to "shady" sites.)

Yes. If you're a free developer (you have to register as a developer to even do this), you have to re-authorise the app every 7 days or it gets "revoked" which means the app will not launch.

You also have to install a certificate that certifies the app(s) to you. This is generally safe, but you should be careful with trust certificates. You're basically taking full responsibility for the code that's being executed on your device. If you haven't audited the source code (or if someone you trust hasn't), it might be a risk.

If you used a signing service, someone has bought a bunch of paid developer licenses and they've given you the certificate for one of them. Once Apple discovers this, they'll revoke that developer license which revokes your apps. The signing service will then issue you a new certificate. Revokes aren't super common, or so they say (I've never used a signing service).