Notices by Tim 🎮 (timixretroplays@digipres.club), page 4

(To be clear, what follows is a review of this gamepad while playing the *original* Duke Nukem 1 on a PC. I won't have time to properly get into the EverCade remake for a couple of weeks, but I can't pass up an opportunity to geek out over a new gamepad, so here we go. Please DM or email me if for some inane reason you'd like to quote this review somewhere.)

Oh boy, do I ever have some interesting thoughts on this controller. Going to have to take a little while to write this out.

For some historical context, I think the best possible controller to use while playing Duke Nukem 1 is: a keyboard. That's what you would have used on the game's release, in July of 1991, unless you convinced your dad to let you try his precious Gravis MK6 when you saw "joystick mode" in the options. The first gamepad for PC wouldn't appear for sale until six months later - this is why you collect joysticks for 2,000 points in the game, and not gamepads.

That becomes clear once you really get into the game. To shoot something that's just above your eyeline, you need to press jump and then fire almost simultaneously. On the Gravis, with its flat, recessed and far-apart buttons, there's practically no way your thumb could accomplish this - but on the EverCade pad, with its goofy domed buttons that are millimetres apart? It's just about doable, and it makes you feel like a wizard when you pull it off several times in a row.

Speaking of arrow keys, the D-pad is some kind of SEGA/SNES hybrid, a cross-shape with arrow indents but also a deep bowl in the middle. The material is pretty slick and it's fast enough for quick left-right flicks. It might be a little too hard to be comfortable in longer play sessions, and its eight-directional movement is hardly inspiring (Streets of Rage was a lot of work), but if you want Duke to take just one step out onto a ledge for a precise jump, it's actually really good at that.

Those buttons are just a little too close to the edge of the pad for my preference - I like to use (according to this thing's Xbox-like layout) A and B for fire and jump in 2-button games, and had to switch to X and Y because my thumb felt a bit cramped. I don't think I'd enjoy this pad in more complicated games, but in a game whose controls consist of jump and fire and arrow keys, it's fine.

In conclusion: the EverCade VS gamepad is hardly an esports-grade tour-de-force, nor is it a high school level essay on the history of PC gaming. Is it the most authentic controller for playing Duke Nukem 1? No - that's a buckling-spring Model M that weighs more than your laptop. But if you're a time-poor millennial who just wants to plug in a box and settle into childhood gaming nostalgia after dinner on a work night? I expect it'll do alright at that. #retrogaming #retrocomputing

@foone if it's not DNS it's PSU

@foone make it look like it's a private key you've accidentally uploaded and you'll halve this month's global instances of security breaches

Have you ever tried emulating #Windows98 on a #Ryzen system and had it crash spectacularly? Just within the last year or so, someone's written a patch for 95/98/98SE to fix it!

There's a floppy image you can boot your VM from, which will patch and fix your Win9x install even if it's partially installed and you hit the Explorer crash, so it doesn't even matter hugely where/when in the installation process you apply it. https://github.com/JHRobotics/patcher9x/releases/

Boosts for visibility welcome!

#retrocomputing

#retrogaming, #pcgaming and #digipres friends, a serious question - say I theoretically came into possession of a pre-release, press-pack beta version of a 20-ish-year-old PC game. How should I navigate the ethics of publicly sharing (or not) that copy of the game and/or the stuff in the press pack? There's a chance I could still get in touch with the lead developer but their original org and publisher are long gone. Ping @dosnostalgic and anyone who might have seen this space before.

@dosnostalgic thanks for weighing in. I'd certainly like to do it, and fans of the game would have a field day hacking it apart for interesting details, but also I don't want unintended consequences to make me the main character on the internet for a day.