I bought a Steam Deck just to support the most important thing that ever happened to Linux gaming, but mine has actually just been gathering dust. It’s far too big to really be a handheld, doesn’t fit in my pocket, and does not fill the role that Nintendo’s handhelds served for me. The main thing I do end up using it for is taking Deck + dock to FGC events for a portable setup.

Last year I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus, a little emulator handheld, as an impulse buy because it was on sale super cheap. I ended up putting far more time into it than I ever did with the Deck.

Maybe the best library of all time, my DS collection is massive.

The one thing that’s sad though is how many classics are unlikely to ever see a rerelease. Games that were designed around the hardware just won’t be the same on any other platform.

Sell the website to who? Aquaman?

FWIW, all three Boktai games do have patches if you can’t play on original hardware.

• Boktai series: These games were so near and dear to my childhood, especially 2. Really though you want the Solar Sensor hardware for the full experience, but I love these games too much not to plug them anyway. Emulating them is worth it over not playing them at all. And for the third game, you’d have to pick between original hardware or the translation patch anyway.
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow - It’s Castlevania. Also play Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance, but Aria is by far the best of the GBA installments.
• Golden Sun 1/2: These games were way ahead of their time for how they designed a combat system that encourages you to use all of your tools and not just click basic Attack as if you gotta hoard your MP for a rainy day. Fantastic puzzles too.
• Mother 3: Surely you have already heard of this game and do not need me to tell you to go play it. Have you not played it by now? Why not? Well, okay, if you haven’t played Earthbound first, go do so, then play this.
• Rhythm Tengoku: A wonderful game about pressing the A button. Sometimes you press the d-pad too. Translation patch.
• Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1/2: If you’ve ever played the classic 2D Tales games, these are excellent spiritual successors to those. There’s a third game that’s JP-only, translation patch is being worked on but it’s been stuck in development hell for years…

Anything popular enough that you can easily google any issues you need to troubleshoot. Beyond that it truly doesn’t matter.

Assuming you’re playing proprietary games, I’m not sure why Steam also being proprietary is a step too far for you.

Anyway if you’re playing games with low enough spec requirements to run on an iGPU, they’ll just run, no extra steps needed. Distro shouldn’t matter either.

When I point out that it’s bad for Afghanistan to “go broke”

Except that isn’t what OP actually said. Now who’s having a rich disagreement with people in their head?

This thread started with vilifying the Taliban, you responded with “oh you want people to starve?” Obviously, this is not a direct response to what they actually said.

All anyone said was that the Taliban is bad, and you’re very weirdly up in arms about that.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Goofy clip of the week

Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike - Friend came to visit from out of town, played some casual 3S for a little while. Also managed to rope him into trying out Waku Waku 7 and Twinkle Star Sprites as I wanted to show off some fun hidden gems in my collection.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Remember when I said I was done grinding this game mode and wouldn’t do another run?

Splatoon 3 - Haven’t touched Salmon Run since the last Big Run and I’m clearly rusty. Put up a 173, which is gold, but I know that gold target isn’t actually much, especially on this map. Still can’t kill a damn Triumvirate, which is what I really wanted.

If this can dual-boot, that could be really handy.

I bought a Miyoo Mini Plus on sale last year and ended up liking it so much that I wish I’d bought a more expensive model with analog sticks. Meanwhile my Steam Deck gathers dust because it’s just way too bulky, I grew up on a Game Boy Color and want something that fits in my pocket.

The ultimate dream for me would be if/when someone gets SteamOS running on something this size.

• Boktai series: Hideo Kojima’s most unusual work, and I mean that in the best way. These games were so near and dear to my childhood, especially 2. Really though you want the Solar Sensor hardware for the full experience, but I love these games too much not to plug them anyway. Emulating them is worth it over not playing them at all. And for the third game, you’d have to pick between original hardware or the translation patch anyway.
• Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow: It’s Castlevania. It’s good. Also check out Circle of the Moon and Harmony of Dissonance, but AoS was by far the best of the GBA entries.
• Golden Sun 1/2: These games were way ahead of their time for how they designed a combat system that encourages you to use all of your tools and not just click basic Attack as if you gotta hoard your MP for a rainy day. Fantastic puzzles too.
• Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: If you’ve played any of the other Mario RPGs, this one’s great too. Has a 3DS remake but I haven’t played that version so I can’t tell you how it compares.
• Metroid: Zero Mission: The original Metroid has aged rather poorly if you ask me, but this remake does a perfect job modernizing it into one of the best games in the series. Fusion is good too, but some fans have opinions on that one.
• Mother 3: Surely you have already heard of this game and do not need me to tell you to go play it. Have you not played it by now? Why not? Well, okay, if you haven’t played Earthbound first, go do so, then play this.
• Rhythm Tengoku: A wonderful game about pressing the A button. Sometimes you press the d-pad too. Translation patch.
• Summon Night: Swordcraft Story 1/2: If you’ve ever played the classic 2D Tales games, these are excellent spiritual successors to those. There’s a third game that’s JP-only, translation patch is being worked on but it’s been stuck in development hell for years…
• The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: Zelda.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Made top 8 at locals. Then played a long casual set with the guy who eliminated me from bracket, came out of it feeling like I understand the Carmine matchup better now.

Kitsune Tails - Got to act 2 and I’m just replaying the same levels with a character who has a bunch of strong movement abilities. New levels designed for this character would’ve been great, but why am I replaying the same ones but now way easier?

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers - My opinions on this game keep going back and forth. I’ve found the strats to win more consistently by just relying on disrupting the opponent’s deck, but doing so feels a little too linear. I saw there’s a big balance update in beta now, so I guess I’ll have to see how the changes feel.

Splatoon 3 - lol, lmao

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Came up with a new strategy at club this week where I just draw good tiles over and over.

Favorite:

• Nintendo DSi - The DS just had such an incredible library, with tons of unique titles you could never experience elsewhere. Though the sad thing about how unique it was is that… you can’t properly experience a lot of these titles elsewhere. Emulation just isn’t the same. While it came out very late and wasn’t worth upgrading to if you already owned an earlier model, the DSi was a very nice and sleek evolution on the hardware. Much more softmod-friendly too.
• Miyoo Mini Plus - Bought this last year on sale as an impulse buy. Ended up liking it so much I wish I’d bought a more expensive model with analog sticks. My ultimate dream is to someday get something that runs SteamOS in this form factor.
• My custom built fightstick - Put this together last year to replace my old Hori RAP4. Really happy with how it turned out! Love the GP2040-CE, I used to have to go through an adapter to use the HRAP4 on Switch and I can feel the difference not having that added latency anymore.

Hard for me to name least favorites, because I haven’t owned a system I actively disliked, and I don’t wanna just say CD-i or N-Gage or whatever. But I guess I’ll list ones that I have mixed feelings on:

• Wii - The Wii had a few great games. It also had a lot of duds. The saddest thing about it is how many games had to shoehorn waggle gimmicks in, and how few of them actually did it well.
• Steam Deck - As a Linux nerd that wants to see the platform grow, I love that the Steam Deck exists. It’s arguably the most important thing that has happened to Linux gaming. It just isn’t for me at all. It’s too big to be a handheld, I grew up on a Game Boy Color and I still love curling up with handhelds in bed, but this doesn’t feel cozy to play with at all. I do occasionally use it + dock as a portable setup I can take to FGC events, or when I have guests I’ll sometimes hook it up to the TV for Jackbox, but it mostly gathers dust the rest of the time.
• Switch - Great library, and the hybrid form clearly worked out for Nintendo just because they don’t have to divide their output between two platforms. But like the Deck, it’s not what I want in a handheld, mine doesn’t leave the dock. It’s also rather frustrating how many bad ports the system got, I wish developers would simply stop trying to port games it clearly can’t handle - especially when there are plenty of older titles in their back catalog that I’m sure could have good ports but get overlooked. And don’t get me started on JoyCons!

Them’s Fightin’ Herds - Glue Cup was short on commentators this week, so I volunteered to fill in. Been a long time since I’ve done proper commentary, honestly missed it a lot.

Mega Knockdown - Took 4th in the 2nd Anniversary bracket, and streamed top 4 on my own channel.

Kitsune Tails - Cute little platformer, but maybe a little too on the nose in just how much it copies from SMB3. I think they didn’t need to put Kuribo’s Shoe in there.

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers - Liked the demo a lot, but my opinions are already a little more mixed on the full version. It has cool ideas, but it feels like there’s just not enough player agency, and a lot of ways to get stuck in stalemates. Maybe I need to give it a little more time to figure out strats I’m missing.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Casual practice, no cool clips worth sharing this week. Or maybe I just don’t feel like dumping my SD card right now.

Splatoon 3 - Also just practice sessions.

Slay the Spire - The usual.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Running out of things to say here.

CrossCode is my favorite RPG of all time, and that’s a high bar. Super excited for anything else Radical Fish Games does.

If you haven’t, I beg you all to please go play CrossCode.

Has there been any word on a Linux port? Since it’s in Love2D I saw people were able to unofficially inject it into the native runtime, so it would be great to have that made official.

Same as last week.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - I’m back on my bullshit again. Uzuki arc was fun, but when it comes time for bracket I gotta lock in. And by lock in, I mean still play like a clown.

Splatoon 3 - Didn’t have too much time to practice this week, but had one good session. Really trying to work on more actionable callouts, coordinating with our specials and planning a push together rather than merely announcing things after they happen.

Persona 4 Golden - Still just post-Kanji dungeon. At the rate I am going I will finish this game… someday.

Summon Night: Swordcraft Story - Man, forgot how annoying it was that you have to always go for weapon breaks against bosses or else you miss their blueprint forever. Also, RHDN shutdown has me wondering, if/when the third game’s translation patch ever gets finished, where do I even look to find out about it?

Slay the Spire - I can quit any time I want, I swear.

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Came dangerously close to losing my Master 1 rank on Soul, but got a few wins so I’m safeish now. I know I’m too reckless and I’m trying to work on that. I did play one of the best games I’ve had at club this week, had the discipline to fold several tempting hands and it turned out to be correct every time. Sometimes protecting second place through smart play is more satisfying than lucking into first.

Turn-based: Bravely Default. A stellar evolution of FF5 that gives you so many toys to play with, and the titular Brave/Default mechanic opens up a lot of cool ideas just by giving you flexibility in when to take your turn. Specifically BD1 and Second though, I felt like BD2 was a massive step back by trying to introduce a turn order system at the expense of no longer queueing everyone together at once.

Action: Tales. Hard to pick just one, and there are still a bunch I haven’t played, but I think I’ll go with Vesperia specifically for all the advanced tech it allowed for.

Honorable mention to CrossCode as well, but I know someone’s gonna debate whether it counts as J or if it’s just sparkling Secret of Mana.

I miiiiight have had an existing list sitting around to just paste here.