Video Games

I really need to dig through my old games at my parents' place when it's possible to visit, because I owned Tombi on PS1 and it goes for truly silly money on eBay now. If I could sell it I'd be most of the way to buying a Mega SG from Analogue and I could take home all my Mega Drive games and easily play them on a modern TV.
I have asked my mum though and she always gets vague about where they keep the games so I'm a bit worried she gave them all to Oxfam or something.

Nice! Yeah I've got a drawer full of PS1 stuff up there too. Had a quick look earlier but not a whole lot of particular interest, there was a great light-gun with working slide but likely useless without a CRT, and an old school Beatmania controller which may be worth something these days (unlikely I imagine!)

As @Soul says I'd say go down the xbox route with game pass, I wouldn't imagine you'd have to buy a game as the library on there is huge.

Forza is great fun and will certainly fill the racing game itch, I think they also have the more serious forza games on gamepass too.

^ this.

@nefarious - if you've got £180, you can buy my Xbox One X if you're interested. Fully boxed with all original stuff of course.

I've not bought a game in a few years with game pass but have played pretty much everything I've wanted to, even if it's not right when it comes out, and I've played a load of stuff I'd probably not have bought otherwise and really enjoyed. Plenty of fun couch co-op stuff too I play with my daughter occasionally.

This tweet comparing console size and footprint has been doing the rounds
https://twitter.com/keisawada/status/1307623115883597825

Things to note are that yes the S is tiny but the Series X won't fit anywhere, whereas the taller but slimmer PS5 can go sideways and fits in the standard 7'' opening in an A/V cabinet. Also that TV is a weird size, like 36 inches or something.

Shamelessly stolen from another forum

Is that really the takeaway? Surely it's that anything designed in 2020 that requires perching on a stand in both orientations is shit design.
The PS4 was solid design, if thermally a bit shit, but the PS5 is a joke.

Also, the Series X fits in my AV cabinet in both orientations...

I know this is starting to sound like I'm on an anti PS5 mission but surely people can't think the PS5 looks good??

Ha - that's pretty good!

The ps5 design has honestly grown on me. I also like the idea of there being a bit of extra space inside to make it easier if I end up needing to take it apart at some point. Although someone's just compared it to the PS3 which was hideous so I guess we'll see when it arrives. But really all I want in a new console design is a rotating logo like the PS2 but they're keeping me waiting.

I thought you couldn't turn the Series X sideways?

I'm not sure why the stand is needed when it's upright. I have a feeling they needed to include it for when on its side and they decided to make it fit vertically too so it doesn't get binned immediately

I don't think I've ever bought a console due to its looks, more its ability to play video games.

Console wars are a little bit 2006 for my tastes, but I do not dislike the PS5s looks, but again it isn't being bought as an aesthetic focal point, it'll be on a side table in the corner.

I don't mind the PS5 design. The PS4 looked pretty good in an industrial/brutalist kind of way, PS5 seems to have gone down the futuristic/space center route, I don't think it's offensive but it does look like it'll collect a lot of dust in those corners.

The X series looks fine, in a similar way the PS4 did - big black block of entertainment. Not sure about he little one though, looks a bit non.

You can run both the Series X/S sideways or upright, they've got rubber feet for both orientations. No moving logo though - Series X logo is in the vertical orientation, Series S, in the horizontal orientation. This is the only thing I don't like about the design of either console.

I just don't understand who they're designing the PS5 for. It looks like something a 9 year old would dream up but even if the parents of a 9 year old were to buy them a PS5, it would still likely sit under the telly in the living room.

@DethBeard - console wars are stupid. Agreed. Playstation previous gen and, maybe, this gen has better exclusives than Xbox. But their design division is still living in 2009.

My solution to console wars is to buy all of them. Only consoles I've not owned since the playstation are the N64, WiiU and Xbox 360.

Here's something I didn't know. Looks like the Series X also has expandable storage via NVMe SSD except they've partnered with Seagate to make SSDs that look like oversized Playstation memory cards. Kinda cool, although worried about price.
https://www.seagate.com/gb/en/consumer/play/storage-expansion-for-xbox-series-x/

Can anyone help me out with a bit of gaming nostalgia. I can't remember the name of a game that I used to enjoy. It was an aerial-view (not side scrolling) shooter that I used to play with friends back in the late 90s (roughly), I'm pretty sure you could play 2-player and it's 90% likely to have been on PC. The graphics were fairly rudimentary but quite engaging as you directed your hench little character around a varied landscape. You could choose your characters based on their different abilities/weapons and the only one I can remember was called "The Preacher" or "Preacherman".

Any ideas. This is bugging me hivemind. Please help!

the Chaos engine ?

Yeah, this is the only thing that concerned me about the new Xbox. Though they're supporting USB drives for Xbox, Xbox 260 & Xbox One games so I can keep my 2 TB SSD drive full of those.

Hoping that they'll allow me to move old games to that drive then copy back when i want to play to save downloading games all over again...

Got it in one! Thanks.

big black block of entertainment

This to me is what a console should look like, box shaped with just enough detail to identify it. Can't see the PS2 being bested in that regard.

in awe at the size of this lad. absolute unit

PS2 was iconic and, as @Sumo said, the logo you could turn was a class touch. OG Xbox was a joke in comparison.
PS3 was shit - Xbox 360 won that gen.
OG Xbox One was horrible but the One X and One S were better than the PS4.

I definitely agree that a console should be minimalist and unobtrusive in design. Just don't understand where PS5 is aiming at? Maybe the West Coast Customs / pimp my ride sort of customer?

Xbox 360 won that gen.

Actual sales numbers were neck and neck, but the 360 was definitely more popular in the USA and that's where a lot of the worlds media comes from so it had an outsized cultural impact. I think that generation did define what still seems true today that Microsoft are the masters of software and Sony the hardware.

To be clear, i was talking about console design...

But I disagree re: hardware too. PS1, PS2, sure; iconic designs. Xbox 360 was less powerful on paper but Sony made the PS3 impossible to code. It's a large reason why they're still ignoring backwards compatibility.

PS4 vs Xbox launch hardware was an easy win for PS4 but since that, all revisions have been better handled by Microsoft both aesthetically and in terms of hardware engineering. The PS4 Pro is massively limited by its thermal envelope because whoever designed it had no idea what the were doing. The One X, however, has a fantastic thermal cooling design that allows for more power than the PS4 Pro and in a smaller footprint.

It looks to be the same for the Series X - more powerful console (we'll see by how much but on paper at least...) in a much smaller footprint.

To be clear, i was talking about console design...

Really? The PS3 was gopping but the 360 was like a squashed cereal box. And it turned yellow over time.