Treble

What an odd announcement. I thought we'd be getting reveals of big names brought in, and big concepts, but it's all pretty safe and lacklustre so far. This feels like they're throwing the film series under the bus somewhat, to prop up the TV shows. I hope that I'm wrong. Here's hoping there's a phase 2 of the phase 4 announcement.

Cheers @amc. I'm planning to do some thoughts on specific emulators, yep. It's just finding the time What I have been working on is a guide for which device to use for your individual emulation needs. Hoping to get that up soon, then I'll dive into things like PCSX2, Dolphin, PPSSPP and the like.

More bad news for Netflix

I think this might work... BttF followed by The Last Picture Show. The American Dream fulfilled, followed by it collapsing utterly.

After more fiddling around and play, here's some more feedback on what's good, what's not-so-good, and how to maximise spend. I might get stuff wrong here and there, but this is based on actual experience so fairly trustworthy(!) I'll try and get some charts/benchmarks to show you, as well. ------ It's best to go for the fastest CPU (in terms of raw clock speed) you can afford. Emulators go like this in terms of priority: Clock speed > system RAM > cores & threads > graphics card power > graphics card RAM That's very different from what you'd focus on for modern gaming, which is better at sending the grunt work to your expensive graphics card, and better utilize the multiple cores & threads that modern CPUs have. Emulators tend to use a couple of cores/threads max (with the exception of some of the really modern/experimental stuff like RPCS3) so sheer grunt is preferred. To maximise VFM, look at fast i3 and i5 processors, particularly ones that overclock well, i.e. with the 'K' suffix. I still use a Core i5-4670K in my main gaming PC, overclocked to 4Ghz, and it's only now just about showing its age! Still perfect for higher-end emulation, provided it's coupled with a motherboard that supports overclocking. Some emulators really chew through system RAM (whilst barely touching the graphics card's VRAM) so make sure you have 8GB or more installed. I'm not sure if offloading instructions to graphics cards is tougher to code or what, but emulators tend to use their resources sparingly. As long as it can support DX11 and Vulcan APIs, you are pretty much set as they are generally used for rendering the screen image at HD resolutions. They are not, as a rule, used for up-scaling the internal resolution of the system emulated. For example: using Dolphin, when you set it to display at 1080p this uses the graphics card to render the Wii's 480p output fullscreen on your 1080p monitor or TV. When you use the emulator to upscale the internal resolution to 1080p, this will then primarily use the CPU to display 1080p on your 1080p screen. All the hard work is done by the CPU. Stuff like AA (anti-aliasing) is rendered by the graphics card in most emulators but, as you're basically supersampling the image anyway, AA is arguably far less important than in regular PC gaming. If you want to do some PC gaming on the cheap, look to incorporate a card from ~£100 into the build, e.g. GeForce GTX 960 / 970 / 980 or Radeon RX 570, rather than the GTX 750 Ti 2GB that I generally advise picking up for <> £30. We're in a sweet-spot for emulation right now, in that you can emulate everything up to and including the PS2 for under £120 easily, plus Wii (Dolphin) and Wii U (CEMU), and that build will also play games of the PS3 and 360 era through Steam. Emulating the PS3 and 360 requires a huge amount of grunt right now - we're talking top-end gaming rigs, here - but the machines themselves are still cheaply available, and worth picking up sooner rather than later if you're clamoring to (re)play their exclusives...especially now you can rip the disks to hard drive. The other reason we're in a sweet-spot is because, from the PS3 era onwards, there are far fewer oddities, exclusives and Japan-only games that we didn't get to play, or that didn't have superior remasters, remakes or updates. The PS2 era was the last one with tons of 'lost' exclusives, particularly on that machine, the Gamecube and the Wii; the seventh and eighth generations' best games are far more generally available. That means their emulation is still important, but far less vital, than with older machines. ------ TL;DR: For a 'super emulator' machine that doesn't cost much (say, ~£200) get a PC with a Core i5-4670K or 4690K CPU and overclockable motherboard, paired with a GTX 970 graphics card. If you're patient, wait 4-6 months whilst people invest in the new range of super gear from AMD that everyone's going bananas for, and it'll be even cheaper than today! Stick with PS3 and 360 hardware and forget emulating those right now, as they're intensely difficult to emulate and need a Cray to run

All that stuff, really, plus one repeating factor is the rising amount of studio interference and constant rewrites. It's not just down to lack of talent, by any means. The story of Alien 3 pretty much encapsulates what happens to every action / sci-fi franchise dud: the studio is desperate to capitalise on success; they bounce around several treatments. They commission a script; they get cold feet over the cost, the out-there premise or both. They hire on a mix of talented writers and hacks who all have take a go at it until they decide to bin that script and move onto another. This last script is usually an amalgam of all the "best" script ideas cobbled together; the narrative equivalent of 'The Homer'. Because of the time and money sunk, they then hire a director who is either very talented but untested and cheap, or very famous but safe. After that, the first director you hired often quits or gets fired anyway. Someone (or ones) has far too much power over production and there's a battle of creative egos. The film ends up being a compromised chimera of a thing that is an unholy mish-mash that no-one likes. Apply that rationale to any mediocre-to-poorly received franchise film of the last few years: Solo, Jurassic World (both of them), Men in Black International, Hellboy (it's a long list, even from the past 12 months) and the patterns are right there, every time

This is a great shot. The subject has a wonderful face.

So, so many. The atmos is perfect in the Resident Evil remake. A perfect combo of chills and silliness. Metroid Prime has that brooding atmosphere of mystery and loneliness. And just for a change from dark stuff, the universe of Super Mario 3D World is just an endlessly gorgeous, fun and exciting theme park you're loathe to leave

Yeah, but you realise this is another short term workaround, right? Netflix know about all these behaviours, but it's low enough not to be worth combating. As soon as it crosses a given threshold, you'll see subscription become yearly. Based on how things are shaking out, I could see Netflix going to the wall in a few years. Disney are going to do just fine.

Lasers are hardly ever used in Star Wars, they're commonly blasters. Plus white wouldn't reflect a laser. I've tried it with my walls and my cat's laser pen so this is scientific fact!

Actually, that's likely, as according to RT it's only at 59% from over 100 critic reviews: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_lion_king_2019

Nooby question: do you need to pay for Nintendo's online service to download levels? Or is it free?

@Sprite Machine, I was also pleasantly surprised: Spidey skews really powerful in the MCU. Remember him catching Cull's punch in Infinity War? This right after cull's been cleaning Tony's clock. Peter's right at the upper range of strength and durability in this series; much much stronger than Cap/Bucky, only a little way behind Smart Hulk, although considerably less powerful than Thor or full-fat Hulk

I think T2 was an amazing rug pull, as much as Aliens was to Alien. The whole 'Arnie is the hero!' thing was an open secret from minute one, but it's not about one switcheroo - it's a total overhaul. Where T1 is as much horror as sci-fi (and that's rare as fuck; The Thing and Alien are its rarified company) and is about the survival urge and sex urge in survival situations, T2 is a family film. It's one you'd be happy showing to your 11 year old, for a start, but it's also about family units. It's pretty comfy, in a way. T1 is, "The Terminator is coming for you, and he'll destroy everything you love" (and does). T2 is, "No matter how much violence is committed, we have built a family and we'll prevail". That's a really brave thing to do, in the macho world of action films, and put the tin lid on the Reaganite 80s action movies. It went a bit too far, inspiring action films to drift towards anemic bollocks for pretty much the entire 1990s, but for Cameron, it worked. T2 may not be as good as T1 by any means, but it's deserving of its reputation: a genre-swerved and family-skewed action film about legacy and maternal protection that was actually fairly risky!

Put me in the 'this was poor' camp. Ari chucked in so many stylistic references that it was almost overwhelming: Kubrickian camera movement, Joderowsky-style folk apocalypse, the feverishness of The Devils and the doom-laden cosmic nihilism of that poor bastard Michael Reeves (Witchfinder General). Absolutely nowhere near the sum of those parts, though. I was desperately trying to find a subtext, but other than the broad 'white people are cliquey and have too much power and can do whatever they want', there's no message; no substance to this. A mediocre, overlong and insubstantial effort, I'm sorry to say.