Don't feel like joking about war in eastern Europe, Valentine's Day, the
Olympics or the pandemic today. Is there anything else that we should be
exercising more gallows humour about today?

Play:
--=--

King's Bounty II (Switch/PS4) - Well, I unwrapped the package. A lot of
extracurricular stuff (and the lack of a continuous four hour block) kept
me from starting it in earnest.

Virtua Fighter 2 (SAT) - Reporting on this only because I was attempting
one of the many emulation options available to me. It's great, but it's
also largely unplayable with the USB control options at hand. I do have a
number of USB Saturn pads that I need to uncover and try out.

Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing (PC) - What I mean to say is that my son
played for about four hours total over the weekend, which tied up my
gaming laptop because the only way to make it work for him is to deploy a
sacrificial computer near him (a burner laptop, as it were) so that he can
Steam Link into my proper account. While it's nice to reduce the risk to
my hardware, I think I may just end up deploying an extra PS3 out
somewhere near him in order to give him the option to play.

Want:
--=--

Empire (PC) - Watched The Battle of Britain again over the weekend, and
was reading that it actually inspired a video game in the 1980s, one of
the earliest SRPGs we know of. Procedurally-generated maps and studiously
non-specific nationalities for all the combatants made it accidentally
appealing across borders. Best of all, there's a freeware version:
http://www.classicempire.com/

Bin:
-==-

Shin Megami Tensei V (Switch) - For now, but it's also increasingly
unlikely I'll find time to go back to it. I was stuck in an area that's
completely unlike the rest of the game, where it's a puzzle platformer
inside of a building that you navigate with precise position and timing.
And that's not really what I go to JRPGs for. There's a persistent rumour
that there will be an SMT V-2 set in the same world to explore some of the
side characters, which would be nice if the characters were at all
interesting or appealing enough to justify that.

Expenditure:
-----=-----

Balance forward - $627

King's Bounty II (Switch) - $40
King's Bounty II (PS4) - $40
A stand-alone Blu-Ray writer wot I will only use for legitimate and
completely legal purposes I swear (PC) - $50

Total to date - $757

-KKC, who hopes for a nice, quiet, drama-free day.
--
-- "People with happy families don't become spies. A bad | kendrick
childhood is the perfect background for covert ops. You | @
don't trust anyone. You're used to getting smacked around, | io-nyc
and you never get homesick." - Michael Westen, /Burn Notice/ | .com

Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kendrick@nospam.io-nyc> wrote:

> Is there anything else that we should be exercising more gallows
> humour about today?

Almost certainly.

> Play:

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories (PSP) - some sandboxy stuff. I
feel obligated to make my usual moan about the gangs still shooting
you even after you finish the story missions; it's toned down a bit
here compared to GTA3 but can still get a bit annoying in certain
areas.

Crazy Taxi (DC) - a bit more of this.

> Want:

To play more DC stuff again - I expect I'll be having a quick look at
Shenmue 2 and Metropolis Street Racer if nothing else.

> Empire (PC) - Watched The Battle of Britain again over the weekend, and
> was reading that it actually inspired a video game in the 1980s, one of
> the earliest SRPGs we know of. Procedurally-generated maps and studiously
> non-specific nationalities for all the combatants made it accidentally
> appealing across borders. Best of all, there's a freeware version:
> http://www.classicempire.com/

I remember playing a Unix-based Empire game in the 90s, which I think
was a port of the VMS one. Not my usual genre, but it wasn't bad. The
closest thing I've played to that since was probably Civilization
Revolution 2 Plus on the Vita.

> Bin:

Emailed DC saves from Dreamkey 3 (I still have a bunch of these!) not
being the easiest thing to restore to a usable form at this point. Not
impossible AIUI, but it sounds like quite the hassle.

-Rus.