Quoting: StoneColdSpiderI have never heard of Jump 'n Bump....... I will have to check this one out..... Thankyou......

Funnily enough, I've heard of it, but I constantly mix it up with "Bump 'n' Jump" (also known as Burnin' Rubber or Buggy Popper), which is a 1980s arcade racing game by Data East where you have to destroy other cars.

They share the same core mechanic (you have to jump on top of opponents in order to destroy them), even though the perspective and player-avatars are entirely different, so I wonder if that was an intentional reference?

Quoting: TheSHEEEPI wonder if there's any Jazz Jackrabbit inspiration here...

This reminds me of how fun and chaotic the online multiplayer was in Jazz Jackrabbit 2 back in the day!

That allowed for user-created maps, too, but if memory serves they would automatically download to all players once you were connected to opponents, so it could be a bit problematic, as people would sometimes misuse that to give themselves an advantage...

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Quoting: AdutchmanI have to say though: between System76 and the others, the linux laptop space is improving rapidly and it seems that most vendors are starting to ship AMD laptops with very good-looking spec sheets.

I'm a portables enthusiast, and though I won't be in need of any new hardware for a long time, it makes me happy every time I see how much better the Linux laptops and handhelds landscape is becoming so quickly, and how many options we now have. It's worlds away from even just a handful of years ago!

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Thanks for the heads-up, Liam - retro-rooted games with cutesy robots are absolutely my jam, so I'll have to give this one a look.

I was one of the idiots who backed Mighty No. 9 back in the day (thankfully only for a couple of quid, so I wasn't very invested in it and ended up missing a lot of the drama), and this looks a whole lot better than that!

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Quoting: YetiIn the world of open source, there’s no way to truly prevent someone from installing a memory scanner.

It seems to be the same whether things are open or not!

I previously owned a Nintendo Switch, which was found to be easily hackable very early in its life, and Nintendo never cracked down on the issue of cheaters even though they now charge their users to play online - something that removes value from the service for honest players on their hardware, and which can occasionally affect cross-platform titles with cross-play (sad to say that, when I encountered a few cheaters in the short-lived Super Bomberman R Online, I had a good idea where they were coming from due to past experience, and turning off cross-play eliminated the problem for the rest of the game's time in service).

That is to say, in short, it doesn't matter whether a badly-conducted player is using an open or closed platform - if someone wants to cheat, they'll find a way regardless.

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Quoting: Purple Library GuyYou would kind of think that it would be a sort of in general best practice for devices intended to attach to computer-y things not to be magnet-based. How often is there going to be something in there that magnets won't play well with?

This reminds me of when I was in my early teens and really wanted to put fridge-magnets on the family beige-box. I knew better, of course, so it surprises me that we still see things like this in 2023!

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Dolphin is a fantastic emulator in every possible way; It works excellently, and it's very well-documented too, including throughout the emulator itself. I used it to play through the Japan-only full retail version of Bomberman Blast recently and it was flawless - great to see even more improvements!

QuoteAs usual plenty of new features are coming in like support for WiiConnect24, a service for staying connected online but it was terminated by Nintendo (but alternatives like WiiLink and RiiConnect24 exist). Now Dolphin should work nicely with it.

I'm particularly curious about this, since there are some extensive fan-made mods such as Mario Kart Wii Deluxe, which can utilise the fan-made replacements for the online service (which, for clarity, was actually terminated by GameSpy, whose infrastructure it was built on) - if this update makes using those less of a hassle (if I'm remembering right, you used to need to create a firmware dump for this), that will be a big plus!

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Quoting: HamishI cut my teeth on a keyboard using Disney's Adventures in Typing with Timon & Pumbaa back in the day.

I'm a self-taught typist, but honestly if I'd've ever seen that one, I probably would've grabbed it. Timon and Pumbaa, you learn to love 'em.

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I remember the Disney interactive storybooks; I never owned any of them, but I remember thinking that they were novel at the time - I don't think that I was wrong to pick up Timon & Pumbaa's Jungle Games instead, though! (I need to see how that runs under Wine/Proton sometime, come to think of it.)

That said, this one reminds me more of the Dingo Pictures/Phoenix Games/Midas Interactive team-ups, instead.

Fun reading as always, Hamish - and it was neat to see something totally different to the norm this time, too.

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The "Omnipad" on the Nyx controller reminds me of those junky Turbo Touch 360 controllers for the SNES and Mega Drive from the early 1990s, that were trying to capitalise on concerns about the imaginary condition of "Joypad Thumb".

Quoting: elmapulthis is like the dreamcast controller that use magnets to "work forever without drift" ?

The Saturn analogue controller had this, too. Nightmare when the magnets came off!

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Quoting: PhiladelphusThat's an interesting way of thinking about/classifying games–thanks!

Hey, glad to spread it! Pity I can't find the original place I saw/heard it, now, though, else I'd share that too.

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