Interesting timing. Nintendo just shutdown Mariokart Tour on mobile. I went back to my Nintendo Wii which was already modded, and updated it to the latest modded hacks and I was amazed to see more software, stability, and even online gaming brought back!
Hopefully their port of Mac OS gets put in the Open Shop Channel!
Games still came on disk so there wasn’t the madness of endless buggy updates (disks had one opportunity to be bug free so quality was at a higher standard) and internet connectivity was not guaranteed, so there was no way for micro transactions.
However, internet connectivity was available, so things like optional online play were still possible, as well as some basic user generated content.
For me it's the (New) 3DS. It's about the peak for handheld gaming. It can run GB, GBC, NES, SNES very well, GBA can run natively and obviously DS/3DS. You can run pretty much any Zelda game up to the GameCube on it with the official ports of Ocarina/Majora. The emulation community also has some promising demos of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, but who knows about that. I have a Switch and it's frustrating seeing games that Nintendo haven't released for it (like WW and Pokopia), but maybe after a decade I'll get a Switch 2 OLED whenever that comes out.
I don't know that I'd call them rare, but secondhand prices are a bit crazy. Knowledge of how cool modded 3DSes were spread on social media and the eBay prices all shot up. It's a similar cost to a Switch 1 IIRC. The non-XL New 3DS did come to America pretty late so they aren't as common over here. I got a Japanese one originally because they weren't out over here at the time. There's also the IPS panel lottery to worry about. If yours has an IPS panel for one or both screens, it's worth a bit more.
Wouldn’t this criteria make PS2 and Xbox “peak gaming” also? I remember playing CoD online on PS2 and many praising Xbox for its online features.
Once PS3 and Xbox 360 came in picture, things changed slightly since they relied more heavily on their network services… albeit, PSN back then was free for online gameplay. These were on the same generation as Wii, but Wii was a winner for casual playing.
Mind you, I broke my video game addiction shortly after that time-period - my last console was an Xbox 360 - and haven't got a firm grasp on what's come since.
A lot of aging millennials would agree with this statement. PS2 was peak Sony for sure and the original Xbox is one of the very few things Microsoft got right.
Im going PS2 as peek as the sheer number of titles made for it and the ability to play PS1. First edition PS3 with hardware backward compatibility and running yellow dog linux might win over that if they didnt nerf it.
That being said I recently got the Analog 3d with 4 controllers and theres something amazing about the speed at which u can boot and get into a 4 player game.
Xbox 360 was pretty great. My favorite game to play online there was fight night round 3. It was an incredible experience. Managed to climb to the top 50 on the leaderboards!
Later revisions fully fixed RRoD. Not to excuse the original issue, but if you get one of the S models (Trinity or early Corona boards), they're extremely reliable in my experience. I even saw a guy pour a whole can of Mountain Dew Voltage into his Halo Reach edition 360 while it was on (not on purpose, can tipped over) and after some time in front of a space heater it was good to go again. The 360 aged like wine and is very worth modding and playing still today.
Xbox360 might not be the most important console out of ALL consoles, but I think it's the most important _modern_ console. Online gaming, online store, an indie game channel with XNA (which itself was revolutionary, even though some of its importance might be forgotten today), HD support. A lot of things it got right back when these were all brand new on a console. Plus is had geometry wars.
It was the first system of a modern design in a lot of ways.
Six hardware threads, so the thread per subsystem model didn't really work. Instead you got the best results from a DAG of tasks submitted to a job stealing scheduler running on most of the CPU resources. But beside that, no little DSPs that you had to separate work out onto other than the GPU.
And it had the first consumer GPU to incorporate unified shaders (so vertex and pixel shaders ran on the same cores, dynamically scheduled to improve utilization).
PS2 is certainly a high-point in retro gaming via emulation. The huge, diverse title library spanning >10 years, a great emulator in PCSX2 and tons of community mods and HD texture packs make it amazing.
not every console stays connected to my tv... and wii stayed. wii sports is still fun and get everyone moving during a rainy day which is quite an achievement all by itself
Dreamcast came with a modem and an optional Ethernet adapter 8 years earlier. The GD-ROM was too clever by half. But perhaps it was the prototype of peak game consoles. I have a soft spot because the home brew scene on that started a full quarter century ago.
oh geez.. I was not thinking about it, but if this piece of hardware runs PowerPC Mac.. then Amiga OS 4.x or MorphOS and Amiga baby... PowerMac is for sissies when you compare this opportunity!
45 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 30.7 ms ] threadhttps://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Alpha_Xenon_Development_Kit
Hopefully their port of Mac OS gets put in the Open Shop Channel!
Open Shop Channel: https://oscwii.org WiiLink for online gaming: https://wiilink.ca
Games still came on disk so there wasn’t the madness of endless buggy updates (disks had one opportunity to be bug free so quality was at a higher standard) and internet connectivity was not guaranteed, so there was no way for micro transactions.
However, internet connectivity was available, so things like optional online play were still possible, as well as some basic user generated content.
Once PS3 and Xbox 360 came in picture, things changed slightly since they relied more heavily on their network services… albeit, PSN back then was free for online gameplay. These were on the same generation as Wii, but Wii was a winner for casual playing.
Mind you, I broke my video game addiction shortly after that time-period - my last console was an Xbox 360 - and haven't got a firm grasp on what's come since.
Final Fantasy X, Metal Gear Solid 2, Gran Turismo, and GTA.
I'm guessing you mean GTA 3, but then we also had GTA Vice City... and GTA San Andreas. Which are all three in the top 5 selling games for the PS2.
That being said I recently got the Analog 3d with 4 controllers and theres something amazing about the speed at which u can boot and get into a 4 player game.
Six hardware threads, so the thread per subsystem model didn't really work. Instead you got the best results from a DAG of tasks submitted to a job stealing scheduler running on most of the CPU resources. But beside that, no little DSPs that you had to separate work out onto other than the GPU.
And it had the first consumer GPU to incorporate unified shaders (so vertex and pixel shaders ran on the same cores, dynamically scheduled to improve utilization).
sonic_boom.jpeg.gif
Outside of a handful pf motionplus compatible games, there was no gyroscope. Everything relied on a 3axis accelerometer.
Eek my son is not gonna be happy about that
> and I fell in love with the jank as it were (hacks
> upon hacks upon hacks going back to the 1980s is
> something I’d definitely describe as “jank”).
Modern macOS still has classic Mac OS code in it dating as far back, and has added Objective C and Swift abstractions on top.
USB hubs, USB SATA adapters and USB Ethernet interfaces for the win.