Next up on the GOTY 2025 train, some mild disappointments and one enjoyable game.

All those who recommended showing Ethan "Cause and Effect" to sell him on Star Trek The Next Generation: you were correct. He liked the episode. Said it reminded him of some Haruhi Suzumiya arc.

Next up on the GOTY 2025 podcast, a discussion of a disappointment eight years in the making: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond.

I finally found it. It's called Ananta. No wonder I forgot the title, because it sounds like a lesser known subspecies of snake or something. Not an MMO open world cop simulator anime game... thing. youtu.be/BMzzXYQ8zoQ?...

Everyone, help me remember. There was some open world sandbox game featured in a State of Play with an anime art style. You play as a cop or investigator, and you had a deputy who was a bunny girl or something. I can't remember its name and can't seem to find it in a search engine.

I've finally got a GOTY 2025 Unversed Cast episode for ya'll. This time is some catch up games and some 2025 games.

I'm trying to get my family's original Wii to read discs again. I go through all the trouble of replacing the laser assembly and appropriately retightening the screws on the spindle motor assembly and the damn thing still won't read any discs.

I can't seem to find solid confirmation anywhere, so I need to defer to the internet. Does there exist a revision(s) of the Sega Genesis Model 2 that when unmodded (no Triple Bypass) will output duplicated mono audio over the stereo pins in the multi out?

Every time I go to the gym I see Scott Bakula in some kind of NCIS show on the TVs. I guess that's what he's been doing since Star Trek Enterprise wrapped.

I just listened to an audio narration of Console Wars, a book about the 16-bit war told primarily from Sega of America's perspective. It's a mixed bag in that the author wrote it in the style of a novelization rather than straight up nonfiction. The embellished dialogue strains its crediblity.

These platinum relics in Crash Warped really don't mess around. I know I've gotten them all on PS1 before somehow, but some of these are insanely tight.

I'm replaying the Crash Trilogy for the first time in a while. I've never been a huge fan of them (they never quite grabbed me the way they did PlayStation kids), but I'm on tier 4 of Crash 2 and getting the gems keeps finding new ways to piss me off. Cold Hard Crash is giving me an aneuryism.

In an attempt to sell Ethan on Star Trek: The Next Generation, I just showed him one of the best episodes: The Measure of a Man. "What did you think?" "I was really bored."

My friend Ryan from the Unversed Cast wrote a book, it comes out on March 6th. Check it out, ya'll. youtube.com/shorts/LVIjb...

The gem in Fumbling in the Dark took me 45 minutes of attempts. I need to commemorate this moment, because that was ridiculous.

Anyways, apparently Escape From Ever After (neé Flynt Buckler) came out yesterday and Steam didn't bother to tell me. I've been waiting on this one for a while. There's no Switch 2 edition, so I guess I'm playing on PC. store.steampowered.com/app/1996390/...

Is Nintendo still being stingy with Switch 2 SDKs? I feel like indie games in particular are a perfect fit for Switch 2 in terms of scope and fidelity (a lot of them are 2D), but even newly released indie games don't seem to support Switch 2 features like docked 4K or handheld 1080p.

Red Hat out there naming their package manager like a 16-year old Zoomer cat-calling a girl on the street. "Girl you got that dandified yum!"

I've been hearing for years how bad the end of My Hero Academia was. I finally got to watching seasons 6 and 7 of the anime, and so far I can't say I understand that reputation. The back half of season 6 is one of my favorite arcs in the series for the character work and thematic development.

Ratchet and Clank in Japan.

I'm learning about Linux for class, and the textbook is teaching me how to use some ancient command line text editor called vim that clones an even more ancient app from UNIX. All this, despite the fact that Linux has had GUI-based text editors like gedit and emacs available for decades.

It's weird how there were so many Wario platformers but they apparently never sold well, to the point that the franchise is all WarioWare now. Wario Land would constantly reinvent itself every couple games, and it made revisiting them so refreshing. You'd think a new one would come out for Switch.

It's that time of the year. New media thread. 2026 in the house.

So have people come around on Metroid Prime 2 Echoes? It seemed to be the ugly duckling of the trilogy for the longest time but most of my friend group seems to like it the most of the trilogy.

I gave this Game Gear an overdue upgrade. USB-C rechargeable batteries, clean audio board with stereo support, new shell, IPS screen, and HDMI output.

Apparently at some point Nintendo fixed the map in Mario Kart World Free Roam so you can track all the stuff you've done without needing a paid app. I swear it wasn't like that when I last played (right before Bananza came out).

I'm convinced Metroid Prime is a cursed game that does not wish to be recorded. The number of times I've replayed the first hour and a half and scanned all those Frigate nodes only to find out something went wrong with the recording is like... six.

I'm going to present this convo from the Gimp Muverix Discord Server. Like if you guys thought I wasn't hot on Unleashed in the review 100 years ago, playing it on Gimp Muverix with @mistertitanic.bsky.social and @alonzo64.bsky.social left me in the position of defending it.

I was enjoying Wario Land 3 more than I remembered, but the second half of the game already feels a step down from the first. If I can get two chests in one visit, why kick me out and make me come back? Why do you have to get all eight coins in one visit? All to unlock the annoying golf minigame?

It's frustrating that Hispeedido is the only company making IPS mods with HDMI out, because they always seem to get 90% there and then screw up something important. The PSP kit cuts off two columns. The GBA TFT kit has video noise. The GBA SP is 480p with overscan correction you can't turn off.

I just finished Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, and I have thoughts, which you–the reader–may choose to endure. I'll keep this spoiler lite, but consider this a warning.

Great website. I try to tag images as spoilers with the "labels" and it did nothing. Anyway, I somehow missed the Super Ice Shot. The bot just... didn't mark it. Contrary to what Google's stupid AI generated response will tell you, you do NOT need every green crystal for Item 100% in Prime 4

At long last, I have figured out how to translate Pokefan531's handheld color shaders to the .cube format that a video editor will read. NDS footage recorded from a DS Capture Card can be color corrected in post!

Guess I get to be at the lonely table for one of people who actually liked the desert... but only because I'm an insatiable klepto.

I'm guessing this is only me, but as I was playing MP4:B yesterday (I got about 5 in game hours in), I was reminded of Halo 4 more than once. As in "this looks like that sniper section in Mission 5 of Halo 4." I say only me because I'm likely the only one who finished that game multiple times.

...this is the NPC the internet went all doom and gloom over? I was expecting much worse.

Why is it that every once and a while a random bleet will just get hundreds of interactions out of nowhere? When it does, people apparently only get the first post because they tend to send me gotcha replies that mention things I already brought up in the second post of the thread or something.

I didn't realize until recently that the original Game Boy came out in 1989 and wasn't succeeded by the Game Boy Color until goddamn 1998. That's roughly nine years of black and white portable gaming being the de facto standard! And I thought the 3DS lasted too long.

Metroid Nukem 4ever is here! ...right before finals week. Reminds me of when they released Other M the week I started high school.

These alphabet soup Amazon company names have gotten out of hand.

Was not expecting this blatant xenophobia on my tv first thing in the morning...

...you can't make this stuff up.

My kingdom for a Sega Saturn Hdmi mod. It makes recording games that switch resolution modes constantly so much easier. Even the 3DO has one now.

Every time I try to play Abe's Oddysee, I try that first hidden encounter and remember just how ridiculous this game can be. The Mudoken AI just seems to do whatever it wants. If you actually saved all 99 of these guys, you have the patience of a saint.

I'm usually pretty good at recognizing voice actors and remembering what they sound like, but I have yet to recognize Xander Mobus in anything despite him showing up everywhere. He's in Pac Man as the evil ghost tree, and I legit thought it was Dan Castellaneta doing a Vincent Price impression.

Wonder if the Steam one can give us the answer

I was going to play this for about an hour and then go to bed but ended up playing it for three.

Yeah this game is great but I really wish there was an optional mission I could play where I ran around and collected oranges. Mmmm… oranges…. 0/10

Thanks for that, video game.

Windswept came out, lfg.