Steven Pendleton

Try DonPachi, Batsugun, and Battle Garegga. Also literally everything made by Toaplan, as DonPachi and its sequels were heavily influenced by Toaplan's games. And because CAVE was made by Toaplan employees after Toaplan died.

With the exception of the tank controls, all of that applies to Sonic 3 (& Knuckles), as you can only carry 999 rings at once, you die if the timer hits 10 minutes, there are multiple unskippable cutscenes, and there are those flying things in Launch Base Zone that you can intentionally spawn with those alarm thingies, and those go through walls.

Honestly I find it so difficult to write kanji with a mouse that I don't even bother. It just turns out all weird-looking and it usually doesn't give me what I am looking for even if I input stuff with the proper stroke order just because I find it so difficult to write kanji with a mouse. Much faster to just use the radical search thing if you know how kanji is constructed.

Google Translate is bad for Japanese. I was just talking about this with one of the English-speaking guys at work on Tuesday. Or was it Saturday? I forgot. Anyway, it's way better than it used to be, but it still has major problems with some things, like how it doesn't know the proper reading for 朱い at all (it should be あかい), it thinks 切れ者 = "cut person" instead of "sharp (as in intelligent/capable/etc.) person", and it struggles with slang both from Japanese -> English and English -> Japanese. "Buy the farm" turns into "農場を買う" instead of some form of 死ぬ like it should, but I suppose I shouldn't blame it for being too literal in that case, as it's still a perfectly good translation, but given its context...

There are many problems with Google Translate for Japanese and it's basically completely useless as a kanji dictionary, but it's still useful enough for most other everyday stuff for the most part, but I try not to use it too much. If you want something that's considerably more useful (but still flawed), use jisho.org instead. Jisho is not perfect, like the "draw the kanji in the box" thingy, which will not give you the correct information if you do not use the correct stroke order, but it's far superior in general.

I played it when the CEO of the company brought one of them to Tokyo 2 years ago. If it's anything like how it was then, the thing works just fine, and I believe that anyone else who has actually played it will say the same thing. Those who have not actually played it will probably deride it as a useless pile of trash, but they haven't actually played it like I have, so yeah.

Now, the problem is if it is worth its price, and the answer is, unfortunately, "it depends". If you want to emulate games, there are plenty of free emulators that you can use on various devices. How you get games for those other emulators is up to you, but remember that only criminals use illegally obtained ROMs, BIOS files, and disc images~

Honestly, the thing that killed its usefulness, provided you already have real hardware for all of the systems that it covers, was actually the RetroTINK-5X Pro. The only real benefit of the Polymega over real hardware was for playing well-emulated interlaced games on your modern display without having to worry about having to find a way to deinterlace them or for games that switch resolutions, but the RetroTINK-5X Pro supposedly fixes all of that if you have real hardware. Both are currently unobtainable, so yeah.

I just use mouse 3 somewhere to the right of the + when I want a new tab without clicking on a URL unless I somehow have 6 trillion tabs already open, as that automatically opens a new tab.

Thunder Force III started as a home game and was so good that it got an arcade release as Thunder Force AC, which later then got an almost arcade perfect port to the Saturn along with enhanced ports of Thunder Force II MD, III, and IV in order to promote the upcoming Saturn release of Thunder Force V. Only the scoring system and the sound effects in the Saturn version of AC are different from the arcade. Both games are excellent and every Saturn owner should have all of the Thunder Force games that are on the system!

Sure. Buy a DAC with composite out that accepts... whatever the ipad uses for its video out and you should be good.

Thanks, man. Your 115 is something to be proud of, as well. I doubt that many native speakers would get a score that high.

lol yeah, a perfect reason that I should be ashamed of it. Then again, I have insomnia and I wasn't able to sleep at all that day, so I was damn exhausted before the test even began. So basically I work in education right now and when I joined the company that I'm in right now, I decided that it might be good to make a TOEFL class. I decided that the best way to understand the test is simply to take it, so I did. There are actually a few universities in the world (generally really good ones) that actually require even English natives to submit TOEFL or other English proficiency tests, so it's not completely unusual for native English-type humans to take the test, especially if they attended one of those schools.

Anyway, yeah, 115 is damn good. You're basically at something resembling native level at that point, I think.

That's a tasty score, man. I'm native English and you're only 1 point away from me, as I have a 116. That's what I get for not paying attention during the listening section because I got bored and then forgot what they were talking about~

You know what you doing.

You should get a PC Engine if you don't have one. They are super tiny! Take a few CD jewel cases and stack them on top of each other and it's almost exactly the same size as a PC Engine! It's an excellent travel system, especially if you have the SSDS3 or the UperGrafx attached to it.

Many handhelds are pocket-sized! A mistake to pack them away, I think! If I'm going beyond a few hours from my house, I don't travel anywhere without some sort of handheld, especially now that digital games and ROM carts exist. I used to carry my Vita literally everywhere, but it's basically been retired to being my alarm clock for the past few years. Switch and Nomad are a bit huge, though, so I do still bring the Vita or PSP go on occasion instead, especially in the summer, as I can disassemble the Switch and put it in my jacket pockets in winter.

That's part of why I love handhelds. You can never go wrong with the GBA, PSP, Vita, or the 3DS. Switch and Nomad are also great, but might be a bit impractical to carry due to their size... and the fact that one of them eats a lot of batteries at a very prohibitive rate. Recommended that you leave the Nomad plugged in if possible!

Yeah, they are expensive. I'm dreading the thought of getting the various sound modules for the X68000 when I finally get around to buying an X68000.

Yeah, the PS2 version is bad. I heard it was bad when it released in ~2004 or so, but then I actually bought it in 2009 when I moved to Japan. It runs at half the framerate of the Gamecube version with additional framerate drops on top of that and super muddy textures. I think the reason that they ported the PS2 version was because of all of the extra stuff that they added in that version. I can't think of any other reason why they would choose that version.

They ported the PS2 version. HD version runs the same as the PS2 version.

I've never actually played that one. I have played pretty much every game in the series released before that except for the Game Boy titles... although I only put a few minutes into both Destiny 2 and Rebirth and I didn't get far in Destiny PS1 or Eternia for some reason. Destiny Director's Cut on the PS2, though... that game is incredible.

Damn! I haven't checked their prices for a while! Well, if you see a cheap one, I'd recommend picking it up, as even now there are still some excellent uses for it... and also faster sailing on Wind Waker HD!

lol that's why I recommended that you play the Wii U version!