“We’re having trouble with AI solving problems. Let’s solve the problem with AI.”

It’s not strictly a bad idea or doomed or anything, but it makes me sad.

I would suggest redirecting slightly. Every single publicly traded tech company eventually fully enshittifies into predatory ad/data revenue generation due to the fundamental requirement that they not only generate profit, but that they consistently generate growth.

I could create an amazing app, sell it for $5, and if 5 million people download it and I don’t sell out or incorporate and go public, I could just cruise on it and retire happily. There’s no intrinsic pressure to switch profit models because I don’t owe anybody shit.

They’ve been added to the watchlist.

Wait, is that the watchlist?

Yeah that’s the one. Whew, for a minute I thought we added them to the war planning chat.

Wait, fuck.

Repeat after me: LLMs do not have intelligence.

A lot of it is that depending on who your party ends up being, it stitches together each one’s ending, so beating the game may let you watch several of said endings. You don’t have to beat it 86 times.

That said, it’s still a crazy game.

Glad to meet a fellow traveler. It’s a gem. I should play through it again too. I have so many little retro emulator handhelds I’m sure I could get through it on one of them in my spare time.

I know! But it’s been “Coming soon” for ages now. I hope it’s still going to come out and not suck. Fear Effect Sedna was pretty damn weak.

Thanks! There was a lot of wacky fun in the PlayStation generation.

Some additional deeper cuts:

• Trap Gunner - because sending your friend on a trip around the entire level into a nest of bombs and mines never gets old.
• Syphon Filter - because, how about… the taser? (The commercial is for 2, but the first one has a better taser… trust me.)
• The Unholy War - because it‘s basically chess but with flying bladebots and chompy little toothbastards.
• Die Hard Trilogy - because it’s 3 games and one of them is inexplicably one of the better light gun games ever made.
• Ghost in the Shell - because find me another game where you drive a tank that climbs walls.
• Return Fire - because if playing Capture the Flag with military vehicles while listening to classical music isn’t a good time, I don’t know what is.
• Star Ocean: The Second Story - because an epic JRPG with 86 possible endings and dozens of different skills like Musicianship, Blacksmithing, Cooking, and Publishing most certainly is not overkill.
• Blast Chamber - because all sports would be better if they were played in a room where you can rotate gravity.
• Future Cop LAPD - because sometimes I’m just tired of conserving my ammo.
• N2O: Nitrous Oxide - because 90’s techno and lasers.

It’s one of the best, most coherent video game stories I’ve ever experienced. Super fun, utterly engrossing. The unfortunate part is the tank controls, but the story makes it totally worth it.

• Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - because it’s literally one of the best games ever made. So good that when it borrowed the Metroid formula pretty much wholesale, they renamed the formula Metroidvania.
• Metal Gear Solid - because it sits in the Goldilocks zone of Kojima-ness. Nutty but not impenetrable.
• Silent Hill - because everyone should know what it’s like for seventeen pixels to make them shit themselves in fear.
• Metal of Honor - because Call of Duty used to be the whippersnapper upstart. Know your roots, son.
• Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 - because there were THPS games with more, but there were never THPS games that were definitively better.
• Resident Evil 2 - because hitting your stride while defining a genre is a beautiful thing.
• Valkyrie Profile - because the world is ending but I really want this mermaid to be happy…
• Fear Effect - because it’s a seven hour game across four CDs but my best friend and I couldn’t put it down until we finished it on day one.
• Vigilante 8 - because they out-Twisted-Metaled Twisted Metal.
• G-Darius - because sometimes you just gotta blast a giant robot fish in the face with a screen-filling laser beam.
• Incredible Crisis - because we all have bad days.
• Tenchu - because Solid Snake shouldn’t be the only one who gets to have fun sneaking around and killing people.
• Rakugaki Showtime - because before there was Smash Bros, there was bashing the Smiley Ball for super moves and launching ICBMs against your foes.

Lots of great ones mentioned here and while I don’t know if it’s my favorite, I have a deep soft spot for Super Off-Road. It has an incredible spatial sense and fluidity for its time and still holds up at any barcade.

FYI, Onyx egregiously violates GPL and basically gives the finger to anyone who complains. Not that anyone is necessarily clean as a whistle and even so they’re miles better than Jeff “I dressed like a fascist before it was cool” Bezos.

I’m a big fan of Kobo, but they also used to have a connection with Walmart.

Absolutely. The Analogue Pocket is dreamy and extremely capable. This is a nostalgia circle jerk from a dude who swore up and down he’d never sell out then sold out instantaneously once a sociopathic billionaire dangled some money in front of his face.

Palmer Luckey sucks. Don’t buy this.

“And if you turn it sideways it works like a mouse”

“Okay”

Why are we talking about this more than that?

A coat pocket can handle all kinds of things. The Retroid Pocket 5 is very popular, has a lot of power to emulate up to Dreamcast and even PS2 generation consoles, and runs Android so it’s incredibly flexible. It’s very Vita-like in form factor and will probably be a solid Anything Device. It’s pricey, but it’s a real One and Done machine.

Myself though, I’m partial to the TrimUI Model S (also rebranded as the Powkiddy A66) and the TrimUI Smart. They are older, far less powerful, and lack L2/R2 buttons and analog sticks so you’ll mostly want to stick to pre-PlayStation for the most part, but they’re insanely pocketable. Plus they can be had rather cheaply, so they’re a pretty easy impulse treat.

EDIT: seeing elsewhere that your budget is closer to $100, you might look at anything RG__XX__ from Anbernic. The RG35XXSP (rolls right off the tongue) is much loved because it’s exactly like a slightly chonky GBA SP. Performance tops out just north of the PlayStation 1 generation, but the price is well within your budget.

Important questions: What do you want to play? Do you prefer vertical (GB), flip (GBA SP), or horizontal (GBA) form factor? How do you want to carry? Is there a handheld you have particular fondness for?

Depending on what you say, there are systems of all these form factors, some pocketable, some not, and varying in power from “anything up to certain Dreamcast games) down to “stick to 16-bit generation or lower”. Some recent efforts have admirably mimicked the designs of the original GBA and GBA SP, while many have a pretty generic but effective form factor.

The game has changed to paying Nazis for Internet now.

That’s gonna be a no from me. There’s a picture halfway down of just how miserable the capture actually is.