As you’re most probably used to by now, this is just my initial warning that what follows is my ranting and rambling about both Steam Deck-specific(ish) news, and general gaming news I’ve spotted and seems interesting to me.
I do my very little best to try make this feel a little like old gaming sites or old blogs. Old forum posts (none of the above I was alive to even witness, but I’ve archeologized – totally a word – enough of these from back in the days of old to know those are what I love the most, so…I try!
Grab a cup of coffee, settle in and poke holes in my mistakes and formatting (or, idk, just enjoy this)!
Two bits of GOG News / Games / Facts / Fun
Konami Code
Here’s one I’m sure you already know, since its hardly a secret. Aside from being a platform where you can tens of thousands of games, GOG also hid an activation via the Konami Code in their website
From your games library, enter up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A and you’ll have two games appear within the secret screen in your browser to play there: Snake, or Pong!
Sierra On-Line
Back in 2022 GOG shared a wonderful blog post about the history of Sierra On-Line games. It covers a lot with links branching off – highlighting some games and some history in there:
It all started in 1979 with a text-based adventure game called Colossal Cave that Ken Williams brought to his home in Simi Valley, California. The game captivated his wife, Roberta, and inspired her to create an adventure game of her own. The title had a plot and art style inspired by Agatha Christie’s novels. Called Mystery House, the Williams family created the entire game from scratch. Thankfully it was a hit (with 15,000 copies sold) and it prodded them to get into the video game business full-time.
The blog post for this on GOG, is here in this link!
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2
The latest update has arrived for Heart of Chernobyl. Patch 1.3 is here. It’s quite extensive this time around, so I won’t list them here (it’d take too much space!) but rather link you to the Steam page detailing them.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 not only suffers from me having to type the letters in with a full-stop between each letter, but it also launched in a fairly broken state. We all know who to blame this time, rather than the (sadly common now) tradition of releasing a game broken because they can, this time it was a real life warzone which affected their ability to make a game.
Hope Town
This is one of two games I’ve spotted on Kickstarter which might be interesting to some. The names and faces behind the game are interesting but the fact they’re stating this is a [spiritual?] successor to the ever-fascinating Disco Elysium (former Dying Light and Witcher 3 devs) is a bit sad. It looks to be true, but it makes me feel so frustrated when games have to promote themselves based on the success of other games, especially when they’re unique. Which this sure looks to be.
The Sinking City 2
I’m a big fan of Lovecraftian horror. Not so much the ‘getting scared’ side of it (I’m a wimp with scary games), but the setting, the atmosphere. The era in time.
The Sinking City (the first game) had a LOT of drama, but since their long battle with Nacon, the developers (called Frogwares) won, and are the sole publisher of the game. And you should Follow this link and read about their battles on a PC Gamer page, it’s a pretty fascinating story about the woes they were subjected to:
Anyway, tangent aside, their sequel to that game is on its way, and being funded this time, in part, by Kickstater.
From their Kickstarter page:
The Sinking City 2 is a third-person survival horror game, set in an otherworldly Lovecraftian version of the 1920s United States. Coming to PC (Steam, EGS, GOG), PS5 and Xbox Series
Experience a heart-pounding survival horror as you navigate the flooded streets of Arkham. Fight terrifying Eldritch abominations, face monumental beings beyond human comprehension known as The Great Old Ones, and investigate the dark mysteries gripping this forsaken place
The link to the Kickstarter page is here!
Half-Life 2 RTX
This one’s something I’m sure everyone here has spotted. Having only just played through Half-Life 2 for the first time a few months back, even I was aware of any tiny bit of news or announcements on the series of games. This time it’s no different, I’d expect.
Anyway, from the Steam page:
Re-live the groundbreaking, critically acclaimed Half-Life 2 like never before, reimagined with RTX Remix. Featuring full ray tracing, remastered assets, and DLSS 4 with Multi Frame Generation, this DLC is free for Half-Life 2 owners
The rating is currently ‘Mixed’ on Steam, with 1,840 reviews as of writing this nonsense up for you all.
The YouTube trailer 5 days ago is here, if you want to check it out
The Steam page’s link is here if you want to just jump straight on over to that, too
Personally, I am more excited by the coming re-release of the Raising The Bar – because just look at it, it’s BEAUTIFUL:
…and one more, unknown Valve artist working on Half-Life - April 8th 1998:
Epic sale
This one’s for the 5 people here who care about Epic Games’ sales and have a library of purchased games (not just those we’ve claimed weekly for years!).
The sale starts on March 26th, but I also weirdly see in a search that there’s another on April 10th for some reason? IDK why. These sales used to be quite significant as they had their coupons involved, but having long-since killed those, well…I guess we’ll see what is worth buying when it happens!
Switch cat
This one’s just…me spotting something I think is adorable, and thus subjecting you to it. This is ‘Switch Cat fanart’ by an artist whose username is shunixe, but also seems to be Xezeno Xezeno1 (which only reminds me of Xenomorphs and how much terror I subjected myself to when I played Alien: Isolation with the lights turned off, headphones on, and all alone. It was a mistake I made exactly once)
Anyway, THIS IS ADORABLE, LOOK AT IT!!!
Metro
Metro has now turned 15 years old. And they’re having a 15th anniversary update (4A games)
The following text obviously comes from their page, but I encourage you to click the link at the end of me rambling to watch that video, running 3:56 seconds, which celebrates all their years.
*Hello everyone,
We shared with you earlier this month that we wanted to tell you more about the status of our team and our future, so what better opportunity to do so as celebration of Metro’s 15th anniversary. In honor of the incredible 15 years of Metro, we’ve created a video to celebrate our journey throughout the tunnels of the metro, made possible by our devoted community that have supported us along the way. This is our thanks to you, the players*
The link is here for their post!
Halt and Catch Fire
HCF, or “Halt and Catch Fire,” was a term referring to a machine code instruction that caused a processor to stop normal operation and enter an unrecoverable state.
It came from early-early computing and is ended up being use to just…describe catastrophic system failures. It’s not a practical command, it just symbolized a dramatic crash or malfunction in computing systems.
Halt and Catch Fire is also one of my favorite TV shows ever made. A drama series set in the 1980s and 1990s, following a group of ‘visionaries’ in the tech industry during the rise of the personal computer and internet eras.
The IMDb page is here, if you want to see the amazing cast and read more
The trailer for season one is on YouTube, and I’m linking you here
Wait, why are you rambling about this? What’s it got to do with gaming?! - I can hear you screaming at your screen right now.
Codemasters delisted
Looks like a few EA Codemasters titles have been delisted from Steam - for those who are keeping track
- Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising
- Toybox Turbos
- Rise of the Argonauts
- Maelstrom: The Battle for Earth Begins
- Damnation
- Hospital Tycoon It’s a strange move, especially considering these are old, old titles now, but still a sad one to see them unavailable (legally)
Digital Art / Gaming
First up is a set of images a talented designer made was this mock-up of how Steam would look if it was running on Windows 98 This artist goes by Blu-s_Attempt and kinda makes me sad that I’m living in a Windows 11 world, and not a 98 one. Three images, and as follows:
And one more:
this time some nice, nostalgic 2000’s era ad mockups done by a talented design artist - RetroB0y, showing a glimpse of what it’d look like if the Steam Deck was released in the early 2000s. These remind me so strongly of the Sony PlayStation ads made and run in the early 2000s for the PS2 in magazines and other print media. No matter what, these are a treat!
This week’s free games:
As ever, Epic gives a free game away, and (I know, the term ‘free’ here isn’t as free as it is with Epic’s) there is some from Prime Gaming. These are available if you subscribe to Amazon Prime, and are yours to keep forever, even if you no longer subscribe to the service.
Epic:
Jurassic World Evolution from 2021 is free this week. This seems a nice ‘get’, considering it is recent and is semi-well regarded, but one thing to remember is that you’re only getting the base game with this. The DLC mounts up immediately, and costs like $80,000 (slight exaggeration) to have everything.
If you are in Belarus, Russia then you’ll be unable to claim this game this week.
From Prime Gaming:
As always, Prime gives a few games each week, and to me is the best deal in gaming. I’ve been subscribed to Game Pass for a looooong time now, but this somehow feels like my fav option. Maybe because it lets me build up my beloved GOG library. Anyway, this weeks games are:
- March 20: Wolfenstein: The Old Blood [Xbox and PC via Microsoft Store Code]
- March 20: Mutazione [GOG Code]
- March 20: Figment 2: Creed Valley [Amazon Games App]
- March 20: Legacy of Kain: Defiance [GOG Code]
- March 20: Mortal Shell [Epic Games Store]
How are you playing these on Linux / Steam Deck?
I’m glad you (probably didn’t, but shhh) ask me! Generally speaking, I play my GOG and Epic, and Amazon titles on my Linux desktop PC by using Heroic Games Launcher. For my desktop, nothing beats this.
Heroic is a Free and Open Source Epic, GOG and Amazon Prime Games launcher for Linux, Windows and macOS. Also available on the SteamDeck!
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The website is here, detailing all kinds of info, including FAQ’s, documentation and links
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Their Discord is here, with this invite, if you want to join in there
Personally, I love how Heroic have an arrangement with GOG themselves. Whereby if you purchase a GOG game through Heroic (or by an affiliate link they have set up), then Heroic will be a small portion of each sale to help support their service. To me that just makes my lil heart warm!
And on my Steam Deck, I mostly use Junk-Store (though I also have Heroic installed there, too!)
I actually shared a post recently about a big update Junk-Store did, but first I’ll expound a little on what Junk-Store is.
It’s a way to play Epic Games and GOG games on your Steam Deck – and my fav thing to share is how it makes it look like Valve made it themselves. It runs via Decky Loader, though in the future this will change as the developer is also working on a way so you can keep it running that way, or install it another.
At the moment though, from Decky you’ll find a section where all of your games library for Epic and GOG will appear showing the game art almost exactly as your games do in your regular Steam games library on the Steam Deck.
This UI is what I love most, it looks and feels and acts exactly as if it were made by Steam, for the Steam Deck. I love the library for the games. Installation is a breeze. It makes installing anything required to make the game play perfectly is as easy as one press (dependencies). You’ve also got some fun achievements that the dev has made himself, which is pretty damn fun to find inside JS.
Croc Legend of the Gobbos
The timeless cult classic Croc and its remastered version arrive on GOG on April 2nd!
“Words can’t express how excited we are to welcome this gaming legend after almost 30 years”
The link to the GOG page is here, which is the only PC platform you can buy and play it on!
Here is a link to the trailer, four months back, on YouTube if you want to see it!
Apple’s long-lost hidden recovery partition:
I know, this isn’t even vaguely gaming-oriented. But it’s super interesting, and I feel like there’s a nice intersection of gamers + tech-minded folk in here who might want to follow the link. Just a quick copy of the user’s post, then I’ll link you to what they’re talking about:
You might remember when I asked about looking for an unformatted Performa 550 a couple of months ago because I was looking for a lost recovery partition that Apple had a couple of technotes about. I wanted to share an update – I was able to find what I was looking for thanks to a kind person here on this subreddit! It’s nifty functionality I had never seen before that tries to save you if something gets messed up with your System Folder. I’m surprised Apple didn’t continue forward with this on later models. If you want to try it for yourself, I uploaded a “factory fresh” hard drive image with this partition for preservation purposes. It works on lots of models, not just the 550. There is still an unanswered question about how the partition was originally created, so if anyone else has a Performa 550 that hasn’t been formatted, I’d especially be interested in finding out if it has this partition, or even just if Apple Backup is a custom version/size that doesn’t match any of the screenshots from my blog. It might also be interesting to find out if the Performa 575 had it too
If you love vintage Apple computers, then this is a must-read!
Ryubing:
Ryubing is my choice of Ryujinx forks. It has at its helm a dev (GreemDev) of the original project. Let me start this short little bit off with a reminder that Ryujinx was not illegal, it was not shut down by court order or any breach of IP. It was an agreement the original dev made with Nintendo (which was rumored to be all kinds of things, but being based in Brazil, ‘the law’ wouldn’t be a factor even if they broke it. Brazil is fairly well known as the wild west of emulation.
Anyway, Ryubing got a DMCA from Nintendo, just another in a long list in the last few weeks which has received such.
- and as an aside, the EmuDeck team use Ryubing in EmuDeck now, and have done so for some time. So…that’s a fact!
Since their github page has been taken down, it is now here with this link, if you wanna read up
Xbox was released in 2002:
This is a little late, but 4 days back, it was that day on which the original Xbox was released in Europe and Australia. 3 years of Xbox being on the scene (in those regions, at least!), which is incredible to see. While their news might be a little thin-icey lately…
Super Famicom
This just…was interesting for me to see. I have a soft spot in my heart for gaming hardware I wasn’t even close to being alive for on release, especially when it combines with gray/beige coloring.
User chunk337 shared an image of the Super Famicom box. These were used in hotels in Japan, where you’d pay a certain amount for a certain play-time. I just love how utterly boxy this thing is, thought you might too!
Quick-fire bits and pieces:
The PC Gaming Show:
The ‘Show returns this June! ‘New games, new trailers, new exclusives all coming this summer’ - showing on June 8th this year.
A link to more details and what will be showing is here, with this link!
RPCS3 Android
Android alpha 5 released for those who love gaming on their phones, and emulating there too!
The link to the release and notes is here
Space Marine 3 is official in development!
A link to the Warhammer Community post is here, if you want to read their own words!
Chrono Trigger Anniversary
Escape From Tarkov: Arena
Has been added to Epic Games store.
You can watch here, via YouTube if you’re interested
The classic game was released on March 11th 1995! So it’s now officially just over 30 years + one week old!
Revolt
And, I’ll drop another reminder in here! My friend Gardiner Bryant set up a Revolt server for Steam Deck, Linux and general gamers. It’s built up a lot now, with 82 users in the sub. Plenty of them are devs and creators of some of the programs and applications you use on your Steam Deck (or Linux PC!), and…I’m hoping it’s a nice place for people to visit and chat.
The link to the Revolt server is here, if you want to join in, have a look, or chat games! I also wrote a post about it some time ago here on Lemmy, if you want to read a little more detail: The link to which is here!
Annnd finally, the server itself is at this link: https://rvlt.gg/dqJT3rJH
What have you been playing?!
IDK, thought it might be nice if you wanted to share what you have been enjoying when it comes to video games! What game have you been playing? Enjoying? Not enjoying? Leave a comment, if you’re so inclined, I’d love to hear more about what the community here has been enjoying, please share it!
I’ve been enjoying a Nintendo Switch actually. I used to be obsessed with them had a lil collection, but I sold them all when I got my Steam Deck.
I recently bought a V2 Switch super cheap in Japan, and I’ve since installed a picofly mod-chip in it, so I can run CFW on there (themes on my Switch! How can you beat that?!)
I’ve been playing Metroid Prime: Remake on it, being one of my fav games. And on my Steam Deck I’ve started to enjoy Half-Life 2 again, and it runs oh-so-beautifully!
And that’s it?
I think this might be the end of what I can ramble on about.
As always, any errors are my own, as with formatting. I do so hope you’ve found something interesting in here, by now maybe you’re aware I am oh-so-very tired of traditional gaming news outlets. They’re running with baked in advertisements, written by A.I. or generally such low-effort swill they’re ripping off a comment they spotted. I just want to at least try bring back the feeling of the old-old gaming blogs, where Patreon and support and donations and ads weren’t the focus of what you’re on a site to see!
If you wanna follow my inane gaming posts, then you can find me on Mastodon here:
<3
@PerfectDark yeah, id have checked sites like ebay (kleinanzeigen), rebuy or refurbished to get one, as well as the games. I’d love to have one but i think itd lie around most of the time. Will take a look at the site you mentioned though
Yeah, 3DSes are expensive in Europe. I’m still angry at myself for not grabbing one for ~100€ when MediaMarkt/Saturn got rid of them.