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I think a lot of times it was used to make porting from Apple II easier!

Agreed. Every official version of Monopoly seems to waste your time with useless animations and make a game known for dragging on drag on even more. The Addison monopoly allows me to actually play a quick game. I like it for that reason alone!

Horizon Zero Dawn, and No Man's Sky with the new updates

LOL, at the time we barely knew what to look for in a computer, and "Do we have to type a command to load games?" is not something that crossed our minds when buying one There's a chance a Commodore mouse could work since they used the same joystick port Atari did. But PC serial mice have the same 9-pin connector, but I don't think they could ever be made to work without a proper serial port. As others have said, Atari 8-bit software that can use a mouse is rare, so not much point in trying

I've read that the Switch runs a version of BSD. Now the media will tell you that BSD is like Linux (they are related), and Android is Linux based, so therefore the Switch OS is basically Android.. That is nonsense. Android is a bunch of stuff built on top of a Linux kernel. BSD has none of that, unless they ported an android layer

I'll admit that at the time the PSP Go was a turn off for me, but now I think it's a great idea-- just ahead of its time I guess.

I personally don't understand what is so appealing about original hardware vs emulators. I mean I still have some original stuff, but it wears down over time. If it's floppy/cassette based, good luck if your disks/tapes still work after 30 years. The keyboards were generally awful to use. Even cartridges may not work properly on old consoles (see NES). Plus they take up extra space I don't really have room for, extra cables everywhere. If you are a true purist then you will of course need a CRT TV for them. That takes even more space. All for some vague warm feeling about having the original logo on the box or whatever it is-- something I can't say I experience. My reaction is more like "Gah! I can't believe I actually used to use this thing! :)" I find emulators nice and compact, you never have to blow in the cartridges or experience bad disk sectors in a game that used to work. Many can emulate the look of a CRT and input lag is not something I've ever noticed. Plus they offer lots of conveniences and improvements over the original hardware. Different strokes I suppose.

I also rewatched their E3 2015 stage demo last night. The game he showed was very similar to the game that was released the next year.

is it not just X=PEEK(MEMLOC)?

Rampart

Lie = deliberate deception. When you have plans that you can't complete because of external factors, it's not the same as a lie. At least they are working to fix the situation. They also announced the extra content before the outcry happened. They knew the game wasn't ready. Sean even wrote an open letter to the community where you can see he was troubled by the situation. "I feel sick writing this" "I don't know how you'll feel. I don't know if we can ever live up to the hype we've generated," You can see the letter here: http://www.businessinsider.com/sean-murray-no-mans-sky-letter-to-fans-full-text-2016-8 And "What do you even do in this game?" became a running joke prior to release because the question was being asked so often.

Well I will say the new CEO is definitely changing things, but what I wrote about is a pattern I've noticed where they kept making the same type of mistake over and over especially during the Ballmer years.

That's why I say I'm not sure they have the resources to make it in the hardware biz.

Microsoft could definitely do it financially. Problem is their corporate culture. They learned all the wrong lessons in the 90s from their Windows monopoly. They came to believe they could dictate what customers want rather than deliver what customers were asking for. (monopolies let you get away with this). This is why the Xbox One reveal was such a disaster and had a huge backlash. They pushed a bunch of things nobody asked for, and most people didn't want. They had to backtrack on most of it. (It wasn't even the first time they made such a mistake-- see Windows 8 and Vista) Microsoft always has some grand unification scheme that never works out, but that it forces its products to conform to. Such as "Windows Everywhere" in the past. Now it's trying to push the idea that all its devices are a single Windows 10 platform, even if they are incompatible with each other. This thinking is causing them to remove Xbox exclusives from the console and put them on PCs. This is causing many people to legitimately ask "why should I even buy an Xbox now when I already have a PC"? This can't be good for Xbox console sales. Xbox revenues ONLY down by 5%? It should be growing! Especially as they just launched a new Xbox one model. As to who can? Someone with resources who is willing to deliver what the market wants rather than what the higher-ups think it should want.

Samsung, Apple and Amazon seem the most likely to me. Maybe Valve since they already have an ecosystem of sorts. I'm just not sure they have the resources needed

I agree with this. Expectations were too high. Hype was out of control. Also before release, the biggest criticism of the game was "What do you even do? They haven't explained the game". After release it was "Everything they told us about the game was a lie". Both are hyperbole and contradict each other.. If you watched one of the videos where Sean actually plays the game live prerelease, such as the "IGN first" one, the game he played is essentially the game we got with some minor changes (like he had to use a transmission tower to upload his discoveries. That's no longer required). He was always iffy when asked about multiplayer. The only criticisms I see as valid was that it shouldn't have been marketed as a $60 AAA title when it is clearly an indie game by a small studio. And they should have made it clear before launch that some content would be coming later for free-- in other words manage expectations better. Also for multiplayer, he should have said something like "we are looking into it" rather than the wishy-washy answers he gave.

I put a lot of hours into it after the previous update. But yeah, if you understand what the game is and isn't-- there is fun to be had. Lots of things to do: Explore planets, mine for resources, upgrade your stuff, trade, fight pirates, build out a base, hire alien researchers for your base, go on quests for your researchers to find rare materials so they can give you new blueprints for things to expand your base, build farms to grow resources. buy ships (and look for just the right ship to buy as they are procedurally generated too), buy a freighter (again looking for just the right one), build a base inside the freighter, fight sentinels discover and name plants and animals follow the atlas path not to mention all the cool photos you find yourself taking when you find pretty planets And that's not even including the new things in yesterday's update!

That is kind of irrelevant as every platform gets made fun of by some segment of the gaming community. (Sony Ponies, Xbots, PCMR basement dwellers, etc) Nintendo deliberately went after a casual market for the Wii, and they have historically poor relations with the major third party developers. The casuals turned out to not be a committed bunch-- The Wii offered little for the hardcore gamer.

MS looks vulnerable this generation though. With a bunch of cancelled games, moving exclusives on PC, relying on the same 3 franchises year after year and making a number of missteps, the market seems ripe for someone to step in and eat their lunch. It has to be someone with deep pockets though to build a gaming ecosystem to rival Sony

Neither was Sony or Microsoft (not really) when they entered

Fad is something that nearly everybody jumps on at the same time, and then all lose interest in around the same time. Tons of people bought the Wii on the promise of motion-control bowling or whatever, but most abandoned it within a couple years. Probably went onto play Mafia Wars and Farmville on FB-- AKA the next fad. Technically the Wii won the sales war of its generation with over 100 million units sold, but owning one felt like you owned the system with the worst sales. I remember looking though a gaming magazine every month and seeing page after page of these great-looking PS3/360 game reviewed, but then only one about one game each issue for the Wii typically. It was like owning an Atari 8-bit again and seeing all the great games and apps on C64/Apple that you couldn't play And despite the Wii selling over 100 mil, the Wii U sold around 13 mil. Where did the other ~90 mil go? They lost interest! That's why I say it was a fad.

The Wii was essentially a fad, extremely popular the first few years of its life, abandoned by its userbase later in its life. Its library consisted of large numbers of crap games AKA 'shovelware' with a relative handful of great titles. I had a Wii, I thought long and hard about upgrading to a Wii U. But in the end it wasn't that the Wii was good enough. It was the Wii U that wasn't good enough- It promised more of the same, except worse because sales were slow. Decided to get a PS4 instead. Turned out to be the right decision for me.

I've had one for a long time, I didn't know about the hacks available, I'll look into it

It's worth it for cheap. The little thing does a lot, but with lots of caveats. It will play some PSP and PSone. Check the official and unofficial compatibility lists- The unofficial one lists many more games that work than the Sony list. Lag problems are mostly on PS4 remote play. Any other lag would be related to the TVs lag as you said. It's not officially supported by Sony anymore.

The common 386 systems did not have local bus connectors for video cards. Video cards were 8 or 16-bit width and plugged into the ISA bus which ran at a fixed 8.133mhz no matter what the CPU clock was. That's why PC systems of that era had sluggish video. The 486 got the VESA and PCI local bus architectures. These were 32-bit slots that ran the same speed as the CPU external bus (generally 25/33/40 or even 50mhz in rare cases). This vastly improved video performance. When PCs got local bus video, it was another nail in the Amiga and ST's coffin.