I bought Rayman 2 on GOG a few years ago, and it had a hard time recognizing controllers. I even tried launching it through Steam, which usually fixes all controller problems, but it still didn't work. The Dreamcast version still looks good enough, and your controller will definitely work.

Due to licensing issues, Crazy Taxi 2 has a different soundtrack on the PC from the original Dreamcast version. The Dreamcast version is the one with The Offspring.

Sonic 3 has also had music licensing issues, so the version included in Sonic Origins has a different soundtrack. Sonic Origins was also buggy at launch, but I hear that's fixed now. Sonic Origins also adds a bunch of new features though, so this one may be a tossup.

Question for y'all: did anyone buy the recent PC port of Metal Gear Solid 2? It seems to have both a lot of praise and a lot of complaints.

Me too; in fact I have two games for it on the way right now! Games made in the last few years! Intrepid Izzy and Postal.

Seaman is one of those games that I'm intentionally not replaying, because it absolutely blew my mind when I was ten years old, and I just want to leave it that way. I'm guessing the tricks they used to mimic conversation would be very obvious to me now, but back then it seemed completely real. That game turned your CRT TV into a fish tank with an honest to god talking fish inside of it... and Spock gave you updates about how he was doing when you checked on him after school.

I'm more than happy to jump over to whichever side is winning. Got my Andromeda flag ready to fly as soon as things start leaning in their favor.

Yeah, it definitely needs trackpads that are easy to reach in order to be a Steam Deck controller. (And I'm saying "easy to each" because the awkwardly placed Playstation touchpad doesn't count.)

I'm curious about this part, though:

Gyro in the "Steam mode". With the sticks having a touch sensor too.

That sounds like an advantage over a Playstation or Switch controller. I'm guessing that means you could enable the gyro just by touching the analog stick, without having to press a button. That's like what most people did on the Steam controller, where the gyro would enable when you touched the trackpad.

I'm guessing GP was referring to the fact that the DRM-free download store is partnering with a "you don't actually own this" streaming service. As long as it's optional, I don't have an issue with it, and the word ironic doesn't necessarily imply that its a negative.

Very cool. I'm also really curious about how the author ended up looking at Blazblue when working on this, haha.

copy-pasting what I posted on !pcgaming for some that are $5 or less:

A few super cheap, not-new games I've played that aren't on the main promo banner:

• Aragami - $3 - Pretty challenging stealth game. The sequel is also on sale, but I hear it's more action-oriented, less stealth-oriented than the original.
• Anomaly: Warzone Earth - $2 - Strategy game.
• Bastion - $3 - Same developer that made Hades.
• Mount & Blade: Warband - $5 - Sid Meier's Pirates, but with horses. (This is not the newest game, Bannerlord)
• Sid Meier's Pirates - $2.50 - Mount & Blade, but with ships.
• X3: Reunion - $2 - Sid Meier's Mount & Blade, but in spaaaaaaace. (I've only played the sequel, X4. But this one looks kind of similar, and is two dollars.)
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six - $2.50 - Tactical FPS. Been a while since I've played it. Was definitely cool when it came out.
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon - $3 - Ditto. This one probably holds up better.
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - $2.50 - Who do you think would win in a fight, Tom Clancy or Sid Meier? I think Sid Meier.
• BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger - $1.50 - Fighting game. Combos are not as timing-sensitive as games like Street Fighter or Tekken.
• Rayman 2 - $1.50 - 3D platformer.

And if you do run into any problems, the Steam overlay should solve any compatibility problems, if you're OK with launching your games through Steam. I end up doing that with all of my games (including the ones I didn't buy on Steam) since I think its controller mapping UI is the best.

A few super cheap, not-new games I've played that aren't on the main promo banner:

• Aragami - $3 - Pretty challenging stealth game. The sequel is also on sale, but I hear it's more action-oriented, less stealth-oriented than the original.
• Anomaly: Warzone Earth - $2 - Strategy game.
• Bastion - $3 - Same developer that made Hades.
• Mount & Blade: Warband - $5 - Sid Meier's Pirates, but with horses. (This is not the newest game, Bannerlord)
• Sid Meier's Pirates - $2.50 - Mount & Blade, but with ships.
• X3: Reunion - $2 - Sid Meier's Mount & Blade, but in spaaaaaaace. (I've only played the sequel, X4. But this one looks kind of similar, and is two dollars.)
• Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six - $2.50 - Tactical FPS. Been a while since I've played it. Was definitely cool when it came out.
• Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon - $3 - Ditto. This one probably holds up better.
• Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - $2.50 - Who do you think would win in a fight, Tom Clancy or Sid Meier? I think Sid Meier.
• BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger - $1.50 - Fighting game. Combos are not as timing-sensitive as games like Street Fighter or Tekken.
• Rayman 2 - $1.50 - 3D platformer.

related: Every Episode of Popular Space Show

Might finally be time to get Cyberpunk 2077. But looking at my unplayed Steam library... I don't need it. I don't need it. I definitely don't need it.

This may not work out the way I want it to, but I'm actually a little excited about these tech companies making a bunch of anti-consumer decisions all at once. So many mainstream users will be looking for alternatives, and it's going to provide a great opportunity for non-profit open source projects. It's already happening with the fediverse suddenly becoming a viable place for discussion in the last 1.5 years. After Windows Recall was announced, I've seen more people talking about switching to Linux than ever before. Part of me can't wait for unskippable Youtube ads.

That's Metal Gear Solid Y for those who are more familiar with the Xbox layout.

This post made me realize just how few consoles had a CD flap. Is it just the Playstation, Dreamcast, Saturn, and Gamecube? Kind of weird how that was the default for CD players pretty much forever, but not many consoles went with that. PS2, Xbox, and everything after those had some kind of tray or slot. Maybe it was because they could visually stand apart from their competitors more that way.

I've never been excited for DLC before, but Street Fighter 6 adding Terry and Mai, from King of Fighters, was very unexpected. I think that was my favorite.

I've been playing Capcom vs. SNK 2 whenver I have a few minutes to spare these days: https://saltylike.us/@tuckerm/112482256002789207.

Come to think of it, there are probably still people playing CS 1.6 today.

Whoa, turns out to be a lot of them. 14,400 as of a few minutes ago! https://steamcharts.com/app/10

That's as many as the two most recent Battlefield games have combined right now. Battlefield 2042 currently around 8,000 and Battlefield V at 6,000. I'm sure console players would boost the Battlefield numbers quite a bit, but still. That's pretty cool.

Bleh, yeah I really hate to side with Google, especially when releasing this documentation benefits users and hiding it benefits Google.

It seems weird for this new license to be legally binding. If someone committed this to the wrong repo, and that person didn't have legal authority over the original content, then how can they have legally relicensed it? I would think that it would be necessary for them to have ownership of the content in the first place.

I downloaded an ISO of it a while ago and played through maybe third of the game. I found it to be very playable. People always mention the long load times, but it's worth mentioning that long load times were much more common back then. (Although Half-Life on DC was even longer than usual.)

Also, I hate to be nit picky, but the blog post linked here manages to be weirdly wrong about two things and it's barely one paragraph long, lol.

Half-Life is one of the most successful video games of the early 2000s.

Ahhh, 1998. One of the best years of the early 2000s.

Half-Life was everywhere... except one notable place: Sega's Dreamcast. It has been a mystery as to what happened with a game destined to have a port on every possible platform.

Half-Life was a PC exclusive until the PS2 port in November 2001, ten months after the Dreamcast was discontinued. The PC and PS2 versions are still the only official versions to this day. Half-Life is not known for being on every platform. Was the author thinking of Doom, one of the best games of the mid 70s?

Aw, I was looking forward to this one. But also, meh, my unplayed backlog is huge.

I'm gonna put on my casual-observer-business-analyst hat real quick: it seems weird that Sony is making so many decisions that they know will piss off customers with their brand lately. Microsoft has been striking out hard with underwhelming exclusives, whereas at least Sony has had a few hits. Sony could take advantage of that and use this generation to crush the Xbox brand pretty hard. The payoff would be huge later on.

Business execs always fancy themselves as military generals; I'm sure they've heard that Napoleon quote, "Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." Instead, they seem to be taking advantage of Microsoft's blunders to just knowingly make their own blunders.

Like, even from a cutthroat business exec mindset, there is a profit-motivated reason to just chill out with the anti-consumer stuff right now. Your biggest competitor has been absolutely unloading a clip into their own foot for like two years. Quit drawing attention to yourself.