8BitDo Arcade Stick and the Zombie GameGear!

Hi! Lussy here.

Remember those cardboard arcade controllers that we made a while back? Well, Geril bought an actual arcade controller, an 8BitDo Arcate Stick. At first I was like, "but we already have our cardboard ones... what could be better than cardboard?", but it's really an impressive piece of hardware.

I decided to try it out by playing Tekken 7 - a game I got about 3 years ago and only played once. I was skeptical about how loose the buttons felt, but after trying it with both the 8BitDo and our homemade controllers, I have to say the loose buttons are better. It was really tough to go back to our own stiff buttons after playing with it for a few hours.

Also, our sticks are built with a Zero Delay chip, and Tekken 7 really didn't want to recognize them, so in the end we had to solve that issue with Joy2Key. It was worth it after all, even though it is weird to play 2 player arcade games on the PC - we really should get Tekken for one of our consoles, so we can play on the big screen.

Other than that, we actually resurrected a Sega GameGear!

We've had a non-working one for a few years now, that we started recapping but stopped halfway. We finished it, but it was still bad, so we bought a second GameGear, that was supposed to work, aside from the sound that only worked through the jack. When it arrived, it turned out that the screen was almost dead, only visible in a very narrow window when looking at it from below.

We then tried to combine the two - the old one didn't even start up, so we tried to complement that with the power chip from the new one, and lo and behold, it worked; what's more, the screen was SO MUCH BETTER than the new one's, after the (apparently) successful recap.

So, the only issue that remained was the sound, and we solved that later by buying a sound board for it separately. We now have a fully working GameGear (man, these Sega consoles are a true hassle to keep alive).

Oh, right, and we're playing Alone in the Dark: A New Nightmare on the Dreamcast. It's super sharp with the VGA output, and it's interesting to try to beat it after it terrorized me and my sleep when I was still a child. I'm getting revenge.

There wasn't much going on aside from that. We're still working, so that takes up a majority of our time, but we try to squeeze in fun things here and there, when we can.