Hello again! A shorter update today, but one with enough info I felt relevant to share now VS a month or two ahead. Let’s get into it!
The Final 100 days
If you’re in America, this is the final 100 days of the Midterm election cycle. Participate in your primaries, vote for the winners in november, and organize, organize, organize. ESPECIALLY focus on your local races like city council and the like; it’s the best way to take back power closest to you and push up progressive movements!
Why am I mentioning this again? Well, as I noted before, I’m in a state where this election is kinda a fight for life for us; Iowa has a nasty Cancer issue with high nitrates, and one of the guys we have to go up against is deadset on banning vaccines and running under that MAHA junk. Yeah, I’d like to not die so I can keep working on this site for you all, so if you’re in the US, feel free to consider donating to Chris Jones and Rob Sand, if you like. Or just give us some cheer from afar, either works!
Anyhow, as the election approaches, so too will more of my weekend time go to working on local and statewide volunteer efforts; thus I might be a bit more sporadic these coming months, but if we secure a nice blue Sec of ag/Governor, it’ll all be worth it for my extra peace of mind and a better security for all of our state. Like it or not, politics will come for you, even if you don’t come for politics. So get involved if you can! Thus if you see me having more empty/low content weeks, that’s the likely cause of them.
Hardware fun!
The Superstation, and its memory card woes, are finally done with coverage here on the site. Funnily enough, the past week had a set of CD reading cores drop, that work amazingly on my LG USB DVD player! Happy days, and for a fraction of the price compared to the SuperDock. Taki still continues to dick around and not take fault for the memory card tolerance differences and seems more concerned with making new colors for his system than address or fix those flaws, but at least the dock/DVD drives has CD support that works really well; I gave Silpheed on Sega CD a go, and was very happy to see the FMV backgrounds working perfectly from the disc!
So, what’s next for the hardware front? I was gonna do the Switch 2 finally, but I decided to punt that until this holiday; it’ll be post price hike and maybe I’ll get at least one of my S2 opinion pieces up by then (even if the BC article seems doomed to be endlessly delayed due to life and being busy for such a long thing). Thus, my next piece of retro adjacent hardware is the Epilogue SN Operator! Got one on order, they’re to ship this week, and I’m pretty excited for them. I always praise the GBAXCart, but decided against reviewing it since it’s a bit of a clunky, python-heavy mess. Luckily, this seems to be more plug and play, and perfect for anyone who wants to dump games and their saves like I do (Yes, not all of us like entering the shadow realm for our games; this helps with curation too!). Expect that sometime later in August.
And of course, there’s the other system I wanna review this year, and well, after thinking it over… I am gonna get an Evercade Nexus. I didn’t wanna until a pack-in game was not included with it, but with all the RAM shit going on I don’t wanna risk dealing with hellish prices a year from now, so what I plan to do is I’ll buy it and review the system as usual, and just hold off on the cart for six+ months for review due to my SNK/BDS moratorium. I might try to approach for a review unit, but I’m not expecting much luck on that front due to my site size. Either way, I’ll have one at some point, and will give you the honest review per usual.
Accidental PS5… The Legacy Queue returns?!?
Soooo yeah, I actually did get a PS5. On accident. Kinda. TLDR, I traded a bunch of old pokemon cards from the early 2010s I had in a med kit into a local game store, got enough money for a good condition PS5 (with disc drive!) and managed to move all my PS4 stuff over to it. Thank you Ancient Mew I opened once, went “huh, cool” and threw in the kit for years and years. I had my PS4 set up to still do the Legacy queue work at some point, mainly after I focused on the modern stuff, but with the PS5 right there and loading much faster (Seriously, I forgot the speed jump between generations), I might actually consider going for some of the smaller-end legacy queue games this year. Omensight and I have a (re) review to tackle, after all.
Speaking of, I decided for these remaining Legacy Queue reviews, I’m gonna add an exclusive prelude to each of em; explaining why it took so long, what my original interest in the game was, what my notes were then that made me bounce off covering them when they were fresh, and compare to what I think now in the current landscape. Should make things more fun!
I will say however, I will still not be accepting PS5 games for SFG review purposes. My only exception is if I can’t get a game for Switch 2/Steam Deck, and thus PS5 will be my backup since I prefer not to cover games for the Series X if I can help it. It’s more a less a for fun thing for me, and a way to help maybe speed up that damn legacy queue: I only have 14 months left before I consider it truly doomed! (The oldest game on it [Danganronpa V3] would be ten years old at that point, uh-oh! They seem to not mind I didn’t get to it, but I do pledge to cover everything I accept, and I aim to keep to that promise regardless) Still, this is a pretty helpful aid for the site. No, I will not review it as a console.
Opinions, opinions
I have a rambly piece on the whole “end of physical games” thing, and the weird, conspiracy-ridden overreactions I’ve seen from some circles of the internet. Can we call that P-Anon? (Maybe not) Anyhow, as one who saw Stop Killing Games be suggested for my state’s part platform at a democratic convention, I think there’s a big difference between helpful activism like that, and… Change Dot Org petitions and spamming affiliate links. Yeah, we’ll have a nice little talk about that, and uh-huh, I’m gonna have to bring up the limited print companies again since they were a warning sign, in my book.
But hey, super fun opinion piece in the works! My September opinion piece, if I can nail it in time, should be one of my favorites in four years… I really wanna do this subject justice this time and not have it relegated to a cruddy video, and what better time than a 20th anniversary? You’ll have to piece the clues together and see…
And of course, if any Indie World/Pokemon Directs hit in August I wanna cover, I’ll do an Impressions of em. My Mario Galaxy one is on ice, and I think I might just cover it when I cover the last Mario movie at some point here. Sorry!
Conclusion
That about does it really. I wish it wasn’t do tight, and I really wish I had more free time to barrel down more of my queue quicker, but my own life and that of my peers in my home state take ultimate priority; if I can’t help them win in November, I might have to actually move out of the state solely so I don’t have to deal with any increased cancer risks. The subject scares me pretty deeply, and I’ve already had my anxiety heightened over nitrate warnings and such as-is! (Do not avoid drinking any water during 100 degree heat out of fear of nitrates, like I did one summer day)
But, the work goes on. My proud work covering retro/retro adjacent stuff here on SFG, and doing my best with my small platform to boost any causes I deem dear to me. Just like I have with Gaza since 2021, I will continue to boost the importance of local politics for as long as I can! They seriously are the secret weapon to getting progressive change in this country, and it’s well worth meeting new people IRL at your local community meetups. This introvert broke his habit by doing that!
Until next time…