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It sounds cool, but I do not know if I could rationalize spending money on another revamp of the console.

This is probably why they're not making as many this time. The people who truly want this will have already pre-ordered. I do remember seeing quite a few of the first run at Target and Best Buy. While the NES and SNES were hardly ever on shelves.

[Sega Genesis Mini 2]

Sega announced a second Sega Genesis/Megadrive Mini. 50 more games including Sega CD titles and looks like a 6-button controller.

Releasing 10/27/2022 only on Amazon. However, Sega also announced that these will be much more limited than the first one. My guess is they didn't fly off the shelves so they are playing it safe by not making so many. I got my pre-order in.

Sega Genesis Mini 2

[August 30th, 2022]

Release date has been announced.

August 30th, 2022

I binged the first 3 seasons of The Expanse. I had no idea about this show and I was surprised that a show of this quality was originally on Sci-Fi. I'm also not a huge space science fiction fan nor do I binge shows but this one caught me.

Wife started watching with me so we now watch it over dinner. 

I donno if it needs its own thread, but the Netflix Resident Evil series is great so far. I binged seven episodes last night!

I don't see why it can't have it's own thread.

Was going to watch it a couple of weekends ago but there were street closures near the theater due to some festival, so wife and I decided against it.

Maybe not this weekend but the next. Should be less people there as well since it's been out for a while.

Last episode aired yesterday. Before I get into what I think about the show overall, I can't not mention what happened in that last episode. There's been a lot of articles and whatnot so hopefully you all manage to avoid it (unless you don't care.)

Spoiler: ShowHide

The first official MCU mutant has been revealed! The fact that they made Kamala the first one on screen is pretty cool in my opinion. With Comic-Con next week, MCU is about to get more interesting. Also would not be surprised if this is the beginning of the Sentinel program.

Then there's the post-credits scene. Seems the Bangles are a lot more than they made them out to be in the show. Might be the introduction of Secret Wars.

The show did not end up being as consistently good as I was hoping but I still enjoyed it. Episodes 3-5 felt very rushed compared to the first 2. I really wish seasons lasted longer. Episode 6 was better but not by much. It gets saved by the spoiler above. Iman Vellani is a great Ms. Marvel though and should easily compliment the other stars in the franchise.

The one thing about episodes 3-5 I thought was interesting was the history of the Indian Partition. It's Disney, so it's not the most complex and accurate representation of it but I never really knew much about it and it got me interested in learning more.

Comic-Con next weekend is going to be very exciting in my opinion. Phase 4 has been a slow burn due to covid but it's finally picking up the pace.

Finally watched the last episode today. Was not in a rush to watch it I guess.

The final episode was good but I think one of the problems I have with prequel stuff is that when you already know the fates of characters (in this case, almost all of them) you automatically lose tension in certain scenes. The story just wasn't that great to compensate for that.

I give this series a 6/10.

I do understand the Hallmark feeling for sure. It's basically a formula for low budget rom-coms. However, I'm still not sure what a Disney movie feels like. I grew up with the Disney renaissance of the '90's with Aladdin, Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, etc and then with Pixar. I also watched a lot of Disney channel with my niece and nephew when I babysat them in the '00's. The last decade I haven't seen much of.

I don't get any of that "Disney" feeling when I watch any MCU product though, which is why I'm genuinely curious what it all means.

@CreepinDeth what I am implying is that Disney has taken the comic book characters and basically Disneytized them and made them their own.

I understand being a purist. If that's what's keeping you from enjoying the shows and movies, then so be it. That's your choice. I don't understand this sentence though. Every comic book movie since the first Superman with Christopher Reeves has taken many liberties with the characters and altered them to fit the directors and/or studio's vision.

Disneytized is still not a clear term. Are they too children focused? Or is that just a way to say that they're not 1:1 comic counterparts? Because it's Feige that's running this. No one else at Disney is putting their flavor on the MCU like it has in the Star Wars franchise (although it seems maybe Jon Favreau and Taika Waititi might be changing that soon with their success.)

There are a ton of comic readers who love the MCU variants. If anything, they're the reason it's successful. They helped the MCU by giving the original Iron Man legitimacy by being outspoken about how great a movie it was. Jon Favreau respected the the lore and I feel that's what's being done to this day (with the exception of a few moves here and there that I've mentioned in the Eternals thread.) As someone who has worked in the video game industry, I have met many, and become friends with, hardcore comic nerds. I do mean hardcore. They may not praise everything as perfect but they thoroughly enjoy the MCU. But both of our experiences are anecdotal, so it would be cool to see a survey on this. I'm genuinely curious.

Just my .02 cents, but Infinity War and End Game were absolutely great at the movie theater and I don't think I will experience something like that again now with Streaming being a huge factor. It was one of those rare, special events that don't happen often. I feel like the original Star Wars theatrical release was probably the closest. I'm so glad I got to experience them personally since I wasn't around for SW.

I'm honestly not sure what you're trying to say here as this picture can mean different things. Especially when Pixar movies are great stories that appeal to all ages. Do you want the shows to be more PG rated like the movies? Are the characters too cartoony?

[screen]

Quick review time!!

I've had my Steam Deck for about a month but have not had much time to play with it due to moving to a new place which took up nearly all of my free time. But I think I can talk about it now with more hands on.

First, I personally love this device. It's what I've been hoping someone would create once I got my hands on a Switch. Having my entire 1200+ PC game library available to play* is just downright amazing. With that said there is a major caveat (hence, the asterisk) with this. Not all games are playable on this. Which is a bummer but it's usually an older game that requires certain emulation software to run (eg. DosBOX) but most newer games do not have this problem. Over time, the amount of games playable will keep going up. Valve is constantly working on fixing the compatibility for all games. Every week there are new games that have been verified by Valve to work with the Deck.

However, (lol) some of the newer games are already too heavy for this machine to run at a locked 60FPS. This is where the magic of SteamOS comes in. There's already a frame limiter that allows you to set a lower FPS so that you have a smooth experience, but Valve recently made this feature even better that I feel is a total game changer. SteamOS now allows you to actually lower the screen refresh rate between 40FPS-60FPS. Which means that you don't have to lock a game to 30FPS like most would do on a typical desktop. If you have a game that doesn't stay at 60FPS but regularly stays above 40FPS, then you can lock both the game and the screen to that framerate. If you want to lock it to 46FPS for some reason, you can. Want 51FPS? That's possible too.

40FPS may not be 60FPS, but it's so much smoother than 30, especially when the screen is also set to refresh at that framerate. I wish this could be done on a desktop but I could see this being difficult for Valve to implement considering there are a gajillion monitors out there to try to work with.

A lot of people have complained about the screen and the inaccurate colors. If you've never cared or asked whether a monitor you have is accurate, then this probably won't bother you either. It will look washed out because you're probably used to looking at your smart phone (which tend to be oversaturated sometimes depending on the make and model) but it shouldn't affect your fun. The black levels are what I wish were better.

The other complaint people have is the fan. It has been confirmed that Valve is shipping two different fans between units. One of the fans apparently has a high-pitched whine when going full tilt. I'm fortunate to not have this fan. Valve has been kind of enough to allow customers to RMA for this reason. I'll post a video of tests done by Gamers Nexus so you can hear the difference. Valve has recently updated the fan curve on the Deck in order to make the fan not go full tilt at lower temperatures. When it is at 100% it is audible.

With all that said, you can change the fan out yourself if you feel like it. Valve has teamed up with iFixit to supply replacement parts for your Deck. This is awesome and I wish more companies did this. I don't have to wait for an RMA if a part goes bad. The joysticks are completely replaceable if you experience any issues with them.

This device is definitely for someone who doesn't mind tinkering. Although you can install games from other store fronts, it's going to take some massaging to get them running. I'm personally just sticking to my Steam library. I don't plan on installing from those other store fronts. I'm also not sure if I'm going to run emulators on this yet. Just keeping the experience 100% stock right now and running games at 30FPS to maximize battery life. I prefer to have more battery versus more frames, but it's completely up to you to tailor the experience for yourself.

I also don't plan on installing Windows. I have a gaming PC already with Win11, so seems unnecessary for me.


Feel free to ask any questions. I'll try to answer them as best as I can.

I've been grabbing some of the games since February. Sometimes they have something great but most of the time they're decent to Okay games. Most need the Amazon launcher, which is super annoying. The rest depend on who the publisher is. EA games will be Origin, CD Projekt games will GOG, etc. I don't think any of them have been redeemable on Steam since I've started redeeming.

@BLUEVOODU oh wow. There's still one more week left. Unless they bumped you to Q3?

I am thinking that you will either like it, or not like, this series.

I mean, you can say that about every single show. In regards to the other things you posted, that stuff doesn't bother me. I've seen Disney shows and they are way more cringey and on the nose with their writing than these D+ shows. Those are mostly targeted to pre-teens. This show is for Teenagers and above. It's a high school character, there's no way it wasn't going to be about her life. Honestly, I find the Sam Raimi Spider-man high school scenes way more cringey than this.

However, I have to agree with @retro junkie too on his spoiler comment.  I was scratching my head after seeing that particular piece play out.

I've stopped caring at this point. More context in my spoiler.

Spoiler: ShowHide

There are only a handful of MCU characters that are true to their comic counterparts. Most are modified to fit this new, grounded universe so it doesn't bother me anymore. Kevin Feige has earned my trust to make cool, comic book movies/shows. Rumor has it that the reason they changed it up was to not conflict with Reed Richard's power set.

Two episodes in and I'm personally enjoying this show. I think it has a lot of heart and extremely creative art direction. The actress is a perfect cast in my opinion.

I'm hoping that the show remains consistent like Moon Knight.

In fact, I had a hard time with Age of Ultron for the longest time. I just started liking that movie a lot more since I noticed a few pieces and how they tied it together with other movies in the future.

My prediction is that the movie will be similar to this. Probably not at the level of AoU overall but the fact that there is a giant stone celestial coming out of the ocean and the two post-credit scenes that are going to have a huge part in other movies. Those things simply can't be ignored. And of course, once the main villain of the MCU gets revealed, the Eternals themselves will have a part to play.

Unless you've been living under a rock these past few weeks, crypto has been crashing pretty hard. Apparently prices for GPUs are falling close to, or even below, MSRP. I haven't really done a check to see how the prices are but if you're interested, now might be a good time to buy if you don't care about the upcoming release of new GPUs.

I don't see crypto dying anytime soon but at least we should be getting some reprieve in prices.

Caught up on the first 3 episodes. So far enjoying it. The first 2 episodes had a bit of plot armor on some of the characters. Not a big fan of plot armor but it kept the pace going.

As for Episode 3 -

Spoiler: ShowHide

This is Vader as how we're supposed to see him. He's supposed to be the baddest MFer in the empire but you rarely saw it in the original trilogy. It was mostly just reputation. We finally get to see Vader in his prime and I hope it continues.

well, there was no character development...

There was, it was just very minimal. The most character development was between Thena and Gilgamesh. Their relationship seemed realistic and I found myself rooting for them. Sprite had some character development as well. Having an adult be in a kid's body played a psychological role on her. Granted it was a little shallow since they couldn't explore deeper but I felt it fit the character. I also thought it was fairly interesting to see Kingo just straight up leave and not come back for the big battle. I was fully expecting him to return and assist but it just didn't happen. If there was a movie to do it in, this was the one. I don't think that type of scenario would work anywhere, or with anyone, else.

I mean, Iron Man 2 barely had any character development as well. It was just there to introduce Black Widow, who ended up being a character that didn't really develop until CA:Winter Soldier. Not to mention the villain sucked and didn't really make me care about Iron Man like the first one did.. Thor 2, well, it introduced an infinity stone... yay. The original Captain America probably has the most character development but I found it to be just as bland as Eternals. I take it back, Eternals is only slightly better than IM2 and Thor 2.

The conflicts regarding morality were decent enough and although wasn't executed well, made me think beyond the movie. More than the other movies I listed, which to me is a good thing.

This movie totally should've been a Disney+ series, though.

For me, I wouldn't call this the most disappointing. I still think the first Captain America, Iron Man 2 and Thor 2 are harder to watch for me. I would say it's on par with Iron Man 3 in my opinion.

@BLUEVOODU - I'll do that as soon as I can. Just finished moving so should have a little more time with it and put up a review. 

If they end up bringing

Spoiler: ShowHide

Quake

into the MCU, then I can't see how they don't bring back Coulson even if it's just for one movie.

Spoiler: ShowHide

I sincerely hope they bring the entire team to be Quake's support.

Spoiler tagging since I forgot you're still in season 3 @BLUEVOODU

Saw it and enjoyed it. Not great (had some flaws and the first half was a bit slow) but once it got to the second and third acts it gets much more exciting.

This is Sam Raimi allowed to be his usual self (for the most part) and it shows. Plus, Danny Elfman's music really made it stand out more than the other MCU movies. It's cheesy at points and also has some of the coolest visuals in a comic book movie at the same time.

For anyone who hasn't seen it, I would recommend going in with tepid expectations. Expect to have fun but might be disappointed in some aspects.

I definitely will. It's scheduled to be delivered next week, so I'll have some first impressions out as soon as I get.

Oh man, it actually happened. There is a crypto crash apparently.

https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/88gyy4/its-a-bloodbath-the-crypto-crash-is-real

That article might be a bit hyperbole but there is definitely massive drops going on. Wouldn't be surprised if the second hand market gets flooded with GPUs.

Got my email today!!!!!!!!!!! 

I should be getting my Steam Deck this week. Shipping is fairly quick so it should probably be here by Thursday.

Whooooooooooo!!!!! 

Holy crap, didn't realize it dropped so much. Kind of wish I waited.

As for being a collector's item, I guess it all depends on how many they produce. Seems like they overproduced to me. Maybe in about 10 years?

@CreepinDeth i think it is my favorite D+ series too. And looking at your spoiler, I'm impressed that you were able to think that through and write it out so that it makes sense. I don't think that I would have tackled it. LOL

Thanks! I'm glad it makes sense. The whole theory was in my mind immediately after the show ended but did take me a little time to put the pieces together. Will rewatch it soon just to catch all the other things I missed and see how it all ties together.

It all made sense when...

Spoiler: ShowHide

Khonshu revealed who he really wanted as his avatar and it was Jake since he's willing to go the furthest in terms of punishment. (ie. killing people.)

Good ending. This is definitely my favorite D+ MCU show at the moment.

Now that we have the ending I feel that whenever...

Spoiler: ShowHide

Marc/Steven blackout, they're actually becoming Jake Lockley. Although Marc is a very good fighter, he's not really a killer but Jake definitely is. Also, Marc knows about Steven because he deliberately created him but Jake seems to have been manifested in a different way and that's why neither of the two know he's a part of them and the blackouts are neither of them knowing they switched to Jake.

Did you end up buying a new graphics card?  Heck... if the world starts heading into a recession... maybe we can get them super cheap 

I personally haven't. Actually moving to a new location so can't buy anything right now as all money is going to the move. Hopefully later in the summer I can get a 6700XT.