As is now my tradition (this is my 10th of these posts! And it’s been 10 days since my last one of these posts, there’s gotta be some symmetry in that somewhere) you’ll know the drill.

I want to at least try give a personal look at the news and interesting stories I’ve spotted in gaming-in-general and the Steam Deck which have grabbed my attention the most. This isn’t anything refined or by any means official - just me trying to bring that feeling back of old games sites, old games blogs. Before ads and begging for Patreon subs became a focus on a game site above the content.

Anyway, if you’re interested, grab a cup of coffee or tea and sit down for a read:

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General News:

Baldur’s Village

You might have seen this one if you’re in that intersecting circle of being a Baldur’s Gate 3 and Stardew Valley fan. A modder by the name of BV created - you guessed it - a mod for Stardew featuring the characters from BG3.

Baldur’s Village is a fan-made expansion that adds Baldur’s Gate 3 characters to Stardew Valley. This mod adds 20+ new beautifully drawn characters, 6 new locations, new shops with special items, events, and more!

Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke himself praised the mod, and it has had 60,373 downloads at the time I’m rambling on here.

The sad part was Wizards of the Coast issuing a DMCA on the mod, which they did say happened “…in error…” after it got a loooooot of backlash (including Vincke tweeting about it) - and dropped their DMCA.

If you want to read more:

• Here is a link to an IGN article on the DMCA

• Here is a link to the mod on Nexus (have a look, it’s fantastic what they did!)

Anyway, this all strikes me as Wizards’ totally meaning this, but backing off when the backlash against them was too much.

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Donkey Kong Champ wins case:

A Queensland YouTuber, Karl Jobst, was ordered to pay $350,000 plus interest and costs to former Donkey Kong world record holder Billy Mitchell (who, let’s face it, is a very controversial figure in recent years!) after the Brisbane District Court found Jobst defamed Mitchell in a 2021 video by falsely linking Mitchell to another YouTuber’s suicide and accusing him of cheating and frivolous lawsuits. The court ruled Jobst acted with “reckless indifference” to the truth, damaging Mitchell’s reputation, and awarded damages for non-economic loss and aggravated harm due to Jobst’s malice and refusal to retract claims. The case did not determine whether Mitchell actually cheated, though his records were later reinstated by Twin Galaxies and Guinness World Records.

To clear things up, Jobst always made it seem like this lawsuit was regarding Billy Mitchell lying about his world records. It wasn’t.

It was about Karl defaming Billy by claiming some other person committed suicide due to Billy’s lawsuits against him.

• A link to an article on the result (The Guardian) is here

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Metro 2033 Redux:

Right now, Metro 2033 Redux is free! For the next 36 hours or so anyway, as of posting this!

Since I’m a GOGFanGirl I’m just going to leave the GOG links here, but if you’re a Steam fan…it’s free there also. And it has been given away before on Epic - so you may have it there also.

I’ll leave a direct link, click this (if you’re logged in to GOG) and it will automatically claim it:

https://www.gog.com/giveaway/claim

Then click this to turn off the newsletter that accepting this automatically signs you up to (or leave it on, I guess if you want it!):

https://www.gog.com/en/account/settings/subscriptions

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Nightdive & the 360 era:

The studio’s CEO Stephen Kick and director of business development Larry Kuperman said they were keen to start looking at potential remasters of games that were only released on Xbox 360 or PS3.

“I would begin asking a couple of questions,” he explained. “Was it Xbox 360 exclusive, or was there a PC version out too? Because that also changes things, the little preservation that’s available. Do we have source code? If so, what’s the quality of the source code? How about the assets? Those are the kinds of considerations that we have there. That being said, there were some really good games that came out in that era that shouldn’t be lost.”

The amount of games that were from that era is…endless. We’re at an odd stage with these ones - there’s not PC versions of all of them, and the emulators are still in their infancy. I run a lot of 360 and PS3 games, but the results really do vary. So I’m excited to see what might happen!

• Here’s an article on it if you wanted to read all they say (and potentially promise

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April:

I know, I know, this one is super late (both in regards to April 1st, and with how old this joke is) to posting this, but I find it kinda sweet.

Just an old April Fools hoax printed by Electronic Gaming Monthly - their first April Fools joke.

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Atomfall

Atomfall has an easter egg homage to a 30 year old game, Z, from another British studio. I just thought this was a cute lil nod to another who came before them:

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Bill Petras

‘World Of Warcraft’ and ‘Overwatch’ art director Bill Petras has died.

“Bill was a legend in the community and he will be deeply missed”

Announcing the news on Linkedin, former Blizzard Cinematic Project Director Harley D. Huggins II said:

“I’m writing to share some heartbreaking news. Bill Petras, a game development legend, has unexpectedly passed away. Billy was an amazingly gifted artist who worked at Blizzard Entertainment for almost two decades. He was immensely proud of the work he did there, most notably as the Art Director for World Of Warcraft and Overwatch.”

The link to the LinkedIn post is here, if you want to read it in its entirety

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Nintendo Switch Things

Just thought a handful of short sharp Nintendo-in-general and Switch things might be nice to include here.

I had a vast collection of Switch consoles and games, but after getting my Steam Deck I just…emulated them instead. Though recently I did pick up a cheap-cheap V2, picofly it and have been having fun owning one once again!

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Deku:

Deku Deals is a the site that helps you track Nintendo Switch game prices, get alerts for sales, build your wishlist and backlog, and generally save money on games. We all know the lack of sales Nintendo generally has, this site makes buying Switch games a little easier.

I’d hazard if you’re here on Lemmy then (like me) you hate Reddit with most of your body. But…maybe not.

Regardless, the Deku team did an AMA recently on Reddit (and sadly it is not anywhere else to link to), so if you’re a Switch fan who knows and loves Deku - it might be worth your time having a read of this AMA they did:

The link to their AMA is here, hosted on the r/NintendoSwitch sub-reddit

Deku’s own site is here, if you wanna just quickly check it out too!

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Nintendo DSi lost photos:

I’m in Tokyo right now. I actually just kinda…ran away from work and life for awhile (previous to this I ran off to Rome), but I’ve been having such a wonderful time. The sheer amount of old Nintendo consoles and handhelds is…vast. I’ve had such a fun time finding some nice ones to add to my collection while here.

The best so far was a Nintendo DSi I bought. Inside it was a romcart with a full sized SD card inside it, and on it were these photos:

(photos have metadata of 14th April, 2006)

I shared the images on my Mastodon, and someone chimed in with the idea it might:

probably Takamizawa Toshihiko aka Takamiy from The Alfee band

I’m kinda in love with these, it’s funny to discover! I’m guessing someone had that flashcart from their DS Lite and just…threw it in the DSi? Who knows. Fun find though!

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Nintendo and Palworld:

Seems like Nintendo has secured two more anti-Palworld U.S. patents, and might file multi-patent U.S. lawsuit against Pocketpair in a matter of months now.

Here’s an article on the goings-on - the link is to gamesfray

Crazy that you can obtain patents and then retroactively apply them. Seems like a total abuse of the system.

And here is a link to the same site explaining how Nintendo has filed the patents after Palworld released

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Terrible GameCube design:

…what’s going on with the Nintendo GameCube controller they’ve got coming for the Switch 2?

That new ZL button (finally added) looks like it is for ants? Why didn’t they make it the same size as the opposite one?

Here’s to hoping that 8BitDo makes an alternative that might actually be comfortable to use. For those why are actually going to buy this console

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Game Boy Cassettes:

This idea has been around for a long time - you take your loose games from their caseless existence and then place them in audio cassette cases. There’s a huge community surrounding the customization of these, how to display them, concepts to print out the game cover art, plastic insets to house the game cart itself…and so on.

This one was particularly nice though, I came across Pat, who goes by hoangnguyen2108 and their printing (the covers, and the beautiful 3D printed cassette housing too!)

Just thought you might like to see these, and what people do to show off their collections:

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Physical Manuals:

If you know me at all by now, you’ll know I just adore the physical creations people make - especially since modern gaming companies have left such a void these days. I found a user called RowanFN1 who makes their own miniature printed manuals for their games.

There’s a lot of these, but I’ve just grabbed a few photos to show what they look like. I am very into this - I look at the ‘big box’ PC games from before I was born and see the amazing things they came with, it makes me feel sad about the state of gaming now.

Anyway, time for the photos:

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Switch Spines:

Last one for the Nintendo bits and pieces. I found a community called Switch Spines who re-make their game covers to remove that horrible red design, and instead do their own full-color replacements.

I’ll just include a few images because for some reason I’m kinda obsessed with physical game covers/cases (my lurking of the GOG thread where they make physical covers for GOG games is like…my fav place on the internet besides Mastodon)

Here’s some examples:

I think its an improvement. Do you?

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Quick-fire two Interesting things:

Project Hailstorm:

I found a nice game made by a indie developer called Project Hailstorm: a small 15 minute title which is made with a specific Steam Deck settings preset so it plays nicely on there, too.

The developer shared it stating they’re doing their best to make it look and feel like it is a AAA atmosphere.

Its also free!

There’s no cloud saves (nor does there need to be, tbh), and no achievements - but do yourselves a favor and install it. It gives a great impression that you are there:

“𝘚𝘵𝘦𝘱 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘦𝘱𝘵𝘩𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘺𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘏𝘢𝘪𝘭𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘮.”

Nice to see some care taken with lil indie titles :)

The link to the Steam page for the game is here too, if you want to check it out!

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Dave the DLC:

Dave the Diver releases another FOMO DLC - this one is Like a Dragon themed, and limited to 6 months. Shitty. The dev has sworn this time that it will be the last time they release FOMO DLC (the last being Godzilla themed)

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What have you been playing?

Just curious about what you’ve all been playing lately! You might be used to me asking this, if you’re not new to my posts. I just like to get an idea - its like pop-psychology: match the username to the game titles.

I’ve still been playing Death Stranding on my Steam Deck, because it’s my absolute love. I love the setting and the atmosphere, and the music they hold back for the more important moments you don’t realize are important until you hear the sounds and…take the time to look around.

And on my Switch I’ve actually been playing Fitness Boxing 3. Since I’m traveling and in hotel suites, I’m just doing my own thing, and that game really can make your heart rate push up! I can’t see myself as some uber-boxing-girl with this alone, but it’s been fun.

So…what have you been playing?

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Finally?

Sorry this isn’t quite as themed or detailed as I typically post here! Being abroad and between places means I’ve been a lil scattered this time. But I do hope you’re all well, and having fun gaming!

Pinkie-swear next one will be back to normal.

And - as always, any errors or formatting issues, anything awful, that’s all on me!

If you do want to add me to Mastodon too, I typically post there each day! You can find me here:

<3