A Lazy Coward`s Guide to Fighting Fascism

Gaming has never been so expensive. OK, that’s not true, gaming is - weighed against inflation - the cheapest it’s been since the $1 shareware bin days at the local supermarket. Dedicated gaming HARDWARE targeted at the average consumer has never been more expensive. There have always been elite consoles that were the stuff of school yard legend - NeoGeo, 3DO, The Turbo Express, just to name a few -, but predictive search algorithms holding up the entire fake economy have demanded so much silicon that now entry level consoles, which no longer get the benefit of walled-garden subsidy, are coming in at prices that look like cruise packages. “Our hands are tied” say the giant corporations who are literally behind the Ozian nightmare curtain, shoveling coal into the Furnace of Occasionally Almost Correct Things. “You must bear the burden of the problem we caused because the solution we *absolutely* posses won’t drive shareholder value the way the human suffering engine does.”

I have no cash, and I must game.

Owing to the Enshittifiplaystation 6 being one step away from a set-top streaming box, the X-Box following suit immediately on the heels of their announcement with Helix the Discless being confirmed, the GabeCube being as powerful as a 7 year old mid-tier gaming laptop and costing a number that shot so far past $799 as to actually cause a globally heard record scratch, Nintendo doubling down on weird digital dongle cart blanks with online-required patches making up the bulk of the software, and any myriad of other depressing, AI-filled, late-stage suck gaming news, the landscape for the hobby is as bleak as this sentence was run-on. The aluminum lining on this Vanta-Black cloud is that it’s becoming cheaper, easier, and better than ever to play the unimaginably vast existing galaxy of games.

Emulation is a no-cost (minus a few things you likely already have, such as a PC newer than 2013 and a VPN…stay safe!) entry to a library of games so large it would be impossible to even sample it in any meaningful way in a lifetime. There are emulation handhelds that put enough power to drive perfect emulation of up to 5th gen hardware into hardware you can have on your doorstep in days for under the cost of a single AAA game that you can never own. There are new preservation methods for old hardware that put real-hardware-only buffs into a place where restoring old hardware is cheaper than buying new, even if a bit limiting, platform-wise. Powerful single-board computers make a DIY emulation wonderland cheap and easy enough for almost anyone, and with enough juice you can even get into some light 6th gen gaming on something like a Pi5 or an Iota. There are just tons and tons of options.

One choice people can make when deciding on their ‘primary’ device for retro gaming is FPGA. “Why the what and how? Also…a little…whom?” I hear you asking. Don’t worry about it. I took a pill I found on the floor at a gas station. It’ll go away. But I’ll answer the voices anyway. FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) is a now somewhat genericized term for support hardware and software systems built around a chip that allows hardware simulation in a fabric of logic units. In a massive oversimplification, the silicon is recreated electronically, making the output functionally identical to the original chip it’s simulating. This allows many parallel, individual components to be created in the array and wired together, creating an electronic copy of a physical component. These “cores” (a compiled layout for the entire simulated system targeting a specific FPGA architecture), when wired to I/O through host boards, simulate much hardware so well, their components can be screened into ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) as drop-in replacements for real failing hardware. Why is this important? Honestly, it’s not in the slightest these days. Emulation has gotten to a point where anything an (affordable) FPGA can recreate, a desktop, laptop, or even handheld gaming PCs like the Deck can run frame-accurate with room to spare. BUT, a small number of CYCLE accurate (all memory states, registers, frame buffers, etc involved in a cycle of the main clock on a system matches what real hardware would read if probed at that moment in execution) issues could potentially come up on any emulated system due to host conflicts, performance, system priority, and so and such forth on cetera et and whatnot. Whether or not that would ever be perceptible to a human doing human things humanly is up for debate, though almost every emulator will experience some hiccup at some point due to system stress or memory leaks somewhere upstream. A quick reboot will, with 5 9s of Old Guy on the Internet certainty, fix the issue. FPGA has a consistency advantage simply through its function of simulating hardware at an electrical level. The silicon lottery is not part of the equation. You know what you’re going to get every single time you load a core. Their timings are so precise you can play lightgun games and other games which require analogue timing down to beam-chasing (using the clock to update video signals being sent to a CRT’s beam driver mid-scan) fidelity. Provided, of course, you have a CRT display and the FPGA has been harnessed to outputs it supports. It sits in a niche between hardware purity and emulation accessibility, with a lower price tag than the former, but a higher one than the latter.

Weapon(s Manufacturer) of Choice

If you’re in the target demographic for FPGA solutions, you generally know, but if you’re window shopping, the landscape can be overwhelming. The term gets plastered on tons of hardware and it has many different levels of integration over the entire hobby of retro gaming. So please, come along even if you’re not fully decided on FPGA at all - seeing the differences in offerings may help you make up your mind. Or confuse you more. I dunno, humans are weird.

The choices range from extremely cheap drop-shipped DIY to fairly expensive full ‘modern console unboxing events,’ designed to restore a feeling more holistically, amping everything up to break through the calloused dopamine system of burned out adults and rekindle a spark of joy felt on some holiday morning decades ago. From open to guard-railed to fully locked off. From buck nekkid circuit boards to elaborate or whimsical cases. There are a ton of options which, under the hood, deliver the same experience. They differentiate themselves through additional features, integration of menus and subsystems for development and output hardware often, and occasionally they have an entirely different platform, being built out independently from large public projects like MiST, MiSTer, Tang, and OpenFPGA*. Little separates the performance of the cores themselves on any of these platforms until you get to some of the 32bit systems. Even then, there’s little between them at stock performance. None of the 32bit systems are truly cycle accurate on any of the current FPGA platforms anyway. Don’t @ me. They aren’t. The closest is GBA. And I could go into about 20 pages on why that’s true but I don’t allow comments here anyway, so why bother? It’s my truth. It just also happens to be THE truth. What you do get is, again, consistent, usually frame-accurate performance that isn’t tied to a host OS’ system queue. The point is, once you start bending a little on the hardware accuracy, bending a little more becomes easier and most of these systems have QoL improvements that throw accuracy out of the window (and that I do recommend using, personally). Things like overclocking, post processing toggles - for N64, these are key-, expansion hardware, extra RAM for homebrew, and a lot more are on the table and allow for some differentiation amongst the available higher-end options. Separating them further are the ethics of supporting an actual IDF arms dealer because you like translucent plastic versus not…doing that.

*OpenFPGA is currently only implemented in a single Analogue-branded handheld. While it does provide a fully featured framework, making porting cores from other projects easier, it’s essentially a single-product framework owned by a company. But it does exist with an avenue for deploying it elsewhere, despite nobody choosing to.

Ride the Cyclones

Let’s start off with the biggest, but most ubiquitous options out there. The MiSTer project, built on the Intel nee Altera Cyclone V. The project started in 2017 when a developer got fed up with trying to get usable video out of the MiST project (more info). Driven, like so much of humanity’s progress, by frustration with the stupid choices of our forebears, dev Alexey “Sorg” Melnikov turned to the Terasic DE10-Nano; an educational project board which had just released. This new hardware provided an affordable, widely available, off-the-shelf solution to developing for the MiST project that provided things like USB and HDMI support. Sorg started work on the framework which became most of the projects in this section. Some products consume the project directly, which is allowed, while others fork it and add some of their own customization.

DIY MiSTer

The DIY set has a number of options. First is the OG, the DE10-Nano. This board is still available directly from the manufacturer or through suppliers like Mouser or DigiKey. Quoted lead times are often high directly from Terasic, though just as often they ship much faster upon order. The price at the time of this writing is $225USD or $190USD with academic ID, putting it at the current highest-priced spot for DIY options, though easily the most consistently available. Additionally, it comes with a lot of packaging and additional cabling and software for FPGA development. If this interests you, this may be the best option for the educational support built around it by default. If you just want to play games, this is all landfill.

In addition to the board and its shipping fees, expect to buy a few add-ons to get the most out of it. A 128MB stick of DDR3 expansion RAM, a USB hub, and a larger microSD card (the included 8GB card is very low quality and it’s recommended you just throw it in the drawer you throw things to forget) are a bare minimum for most people. I like to do a ‘full stack’ build which is the DE10-Nano board, a USB hub board in the same footprint that connects with onboard pogo pins or an S adapter, and an I/O board with buttons for power, reset, and menu, as well as optical audio out, analog audio out, and analog video output via a DE-15 connector with options for composite sync, sync on green, VGA-compatible RGB, and a ton more. There are a series of jumpers and power bridges and occasionally HDMI rerouting depending on the I/O board you go with. Some have features like 24bit color or arcade JAMMA hookups. If you have a use case for anything special, odds are someone has already solved it and it’s readily available. There are options for passive cooling, active cooling, water cooling, 3D-printed cases, acrylic cases, themed cases, milled aluminum cases, ITX cases, retro cases, boards to fit these cases, all-in-one boards that provide RAM, I/O, and more USB all hooked up through GPIO pins, expansions for a realtime clock, an audio input for tape drives, expansions for MIDI, expansions for original controllers and accessories via SNAC/SNAX (Serial Native Accessory Convertor).

DIY MiSTer is extremely customizable is what I’m getting at. You can basically turn one into a candy cabinet with a few extra parts. Providing, you know, you own the candy cab. It can be a bit overwhelming because there are so many options and they all have similar names and depending on where you live in the world, the entire ordering process and accessory supplier chain changes. The DE10-Nano is the compatibility gold standard and will just work with nearly anything calling itself ‘MiSTer’ such as IronClad, MiSTerCade, or this monstrosity from across the pond.

Fiberglass board 3D terrorbox puzzles aside, you’re not stuck with the Terasic board for MiSTer. There are a number of alternate options, with . Taki Udon offers a clone board which is generally around $100 alone or $150 in a kit that includes some common upgrades. Full kits with cases occasionally show up as well, but he has shifted most of his manufacturing to the SuperStation and its follow up hardware, which we’ll talk about in a little bit. If you follow his social media accounts, he does announce restocks and it’s a dash, but not a MAD dash to get them before they’re gone.

Another option is QMTech, who came in with another ~$100 offering as a drop-ish replacement for the Nano. While the formfactor is mostly the same, ports have shifted, cable headers have moved, dip switches and GPIO pins have shifted alignment. This means compatibility is usually something that needs to be explicitly called out on accessories. Some, such as the IronClad case, come with adapters specifically for the QMTech design. Some cases have a QMTech faceplate option. But not all accessories support it, making it the least universally compatible option of the major clones. All available clone boards also use a slightly different version of the Cyclone V, rated for a wider temperature range, but with a slightly slower internal cache on the ARM core. This doesn’t translate to any performance issues that I’ve seen.

As with anything that presents itself as open, camps have formed that are a bit of an annoyance when you’re trying to get into this stuff. And DIY generally requires eventually interacting with the community. The Linus of this whole endeavor, Sorg, is notoriously prickly - to the point where the forum actively warns you about this when you visit it. This, of course, emboldens the ‘annoying prickfaced fuckknuckle,’ as we call them in the community. The takeaway by non-geniuses from a gruff, stubborn genius in a position of authority is always that the gruffness and stubbornness is why they are where they are. So you get a lot of …just read my previous post. Beyond that barrier to civility, there is also a strange culture war going on right now that I won’t get into, but believe me when I say it’s some playground frolics hijinks nonsense.

Terasic DE10-Nano

Pros:

• Availability
• Consoles Supported
• Can be used with analog accessories
• Customization
• This IS the development platform where most cores start
• Active dev community with lots of support resources
• The most mature platform
• Built on Linux, remote management
• Dual-RAM digital-only options exist, but are sparsely utilized

Cons:

• Price fluctuation
• Higher priced than the clones
• “Stack” formfactor can be limiting/cumbersome in the livingroom
• Older architecture
• Bad actors in the community
• Overwhelming for novices

QMTech

Pros:

• All of the DE10 pros except compatibility
• Price
• The most mature of the clones

Cons:

• All of the DE10 cons except price
• Compatibility. By far the least compatible of the DIY boards
• Availability fluctuation
• Exacerbates confusion by having limited support for accessories

MiSTerPi

Pros:

• All of the DE10’s pros
• Price
• 32GB MicroSD included

Cons:

• All of the DE10’s cons
• Availability

Consolization Prize

The pricetag on pre-assmbled MiSTer kits is generally pretty high if you can’t catch one of the clones during a production run. Still south of whatever the next terror Sony spits out will cost, but not far enough south for many people as to make this a more attractive prospect than emulation. Enter the consolized MiSTer clones. There are a fair number of these available from dubious sellers on AliExpress, eBay, and Amazon Marketplace, none of which I would personally buy from. But YMMV. So for this I’m going to stick to the major players. We’ll go chronologically for this first entry because it’s the one with an image I already had uploaded. The Multisystem² MiSTer consoles. These are from The Retro Collective (formerly Retro Man Cave) and use a custom PCB in an injection molded plastic case.

In addition to a standard MiSTer setup the board includes the 128MB RAM expansion, passive cooling, USB hub, and an NFC reader for Zaparoo/TapTu* support. A second analog model also includes a 24bit analog video out, D15 port with the same customization options as on the MiSTer analog I/O board, 9pin mini-DIN, and an exposed expansion port for proprietary interface with the user port on the MiSTer via modular upgrade carts. This is fun and for SNAC adapters, it can be a much more elegant solution than a cabled mess, but ultimately it’s another proprietary bit, so worth thinking about for future repairs and replacements. The current price is ~$230USD (without export/VAT) for the base digital system and ~$300USD (without export/VAT) for the analog system with the additional connection options and ethernet. There is, additionally, design built into the console specifically so a generic screen can be mounted to turn it into a slightly ruggedized ‘portable’ party system for tournaments, gaming events, expos, computer get togethers and the like.

*Zaparoo and TapTu are NFC-based loading systems for games to replicate the ‘ritual’ of putting a game in the console by bypassing menus.

Multisystem²

Pros:

• Availability
• Price competes with clones, not Terasic
• Sleek console design
• Zaparoo integration is central to the design (complimentary)
• Lots of connection options on the analog version
• Optional screen integrates well, despite being designed for other systems

Cons:

• Zaparoo integration is central to the design (derogatory)
• Limited to UK without steep fees
• Proprietary expansion cartridge slot limits future support
• Non-customized MiSTer OS experience (If this is a pro for you, feel free to PRO…mote it)
• Shell feels less premium than other offerings
• No included MicroSD card
• No option for dual RAM
• Digital version requires wifi dongle or removing the microSD card for management

The SuperStation from the previously linked Taki Udon is another consolized MiSTer solution with a much more compact footprint than the Multisystem. It also runs a custom PCB and has 128MB of built-in RAM. A quick aside, the RAM tests faster than any other Cyclone V FPGA I’ve tried, locking at the initial 167MHz of the RAM test and never dropping. The aesthetic is pure PSOne. Specifically the miniaturized, late-life re-release of the first Playstation that looks like it got jumped by Sanrio and hammered into something sold in a blister pack.

Apart from knowing in advance it was a MiSTer at its core, you would be excused for thinking it was a single-tasker like the Analogue3D, which I’ll eviscerate later. The system comes after a very reasonable year and change of development time. The build quality is solid and the board design is well executed and very professional looking. The homage to the PSOne continues as we go down the feature list for the console. It includes two PS1 SNAX ports* and 2 SNAX-based memory card slots built into the console. This may trap customers who are new to MiSTer since, because they are built into the console, it feels like you should just be able to plug in a PS1 controller and go. SNAC, however, cannot be used to navigate the MiSTer menu. It is directly wired into the I/O of the core so it must be enabled through the menu with another controller or keyboard. Moving down, the MicroSD card slot is on the front in the center and leaves some edge overhang so the card can’t be lost inside - the bane of the DIY MiSTer case. The USB ports are cut down from the standard 6-7 on most hubs and the Multisystem to 2 on the back and one on the front. A powered hub can be attached, but it’s very limiting if you want to use wired controllers or have a keyboard and mouse hooked up for PC gaming. There’s an expansion port on the bottom for use with the optical drive (hold that thought) and, one would hope, future SNAC controller modules. What it lacks in USB connectivity it makes up for in video output options. It has a fully implemented composite, s-Video, component RGB, D-15, DIN10 “Saturn” 24bit out, and an in-built composite gun-con sync port (again, showing the design DNA of PSOne extends beyond just the aesthetics). Audio is available over HDMI, analog stereo, or optical. An Ethernet port, wifi, and Bluetooth round out the additional connectivity over a stock MiSTer stack. At $210, it’s currently the best value prop on this list. That is, if you’re willing to wait. And…there’s something else we need to discuss.

The discus. Must be discussed. And the discourse is thus: shit don’t work.

The SuperDock, which was planned to release with full support for reading and backing up Playstation games from real media can’t read anything right now. The add-on still functions as an additional 4 USB ports, has an M.2 drive port, and does some IR nonsense for remote control (and for $40, so temper your temper), but the core functionality as an optical disc reader for Playstation (and one would assume other cores, potentially) just isn’t ready. This comes in parallel with the news that the custom console-mode OS is also not ready. All of that said, if you want a MiSTer and you like or don’t mind the PSOne look, this is a hard one to not recommend at the price it’s being offered.

SuperStation

Pros:

• Price - you get a lot for your dollar
• Most of MiSTer’s pros, except availability and dual RAM.
• Very fast expansion RAM
• Setup is easy for a novice IF they watch the guides
• Video connectivity is very robust
• Solid build quality
• Very sleek console design
• Lots of bonuses for Playstation fans
• Nice packaging, very long USB-C cable

Cons:

• Some of the wider MiSTer cons like community issues and older tech, but it solves many
• No dual-RAM options
• Limited USB ports without dock
• Some things gated behind the dock (User port passthrough, in example)
• No power brick (must be >2Amp)
• SNAC ports for PS1 may confuse novices since they can’t be used to control anything outside of PS1 games, including any menus
• Custom ‘console mode’ OS is not ready, unknown future release date

You had ONE JOB to do. ONE JOB!

Single task FPGAs are a little strange for me. Logically I get why they are stupid. I also, logically, get why they are preservation and part of the story of this hobby. Someone out there with a full N64 collection is going to absolutely be thrilled with the Analogue 3D as is, no notes. For me, personally, they aren’t useful in a world where MiSTer exists. The Rolls Royce of Doing One Thing Kinda OK is Analogue. A boutique retro company, Analogue hit the scene as a player in FPGA in 2017 when they released their Nt Mini. The successor to the Nt, which used real Famicom parts, the mini moved to a Cyclone V, like our beloved MiSTer. Though a version with fewer logic units. The system got a jailbreak making it compatible with a number of cores, but none that required external RAM. They released FPGA versions of the SNES and Genesis/MegaDrive which both also got jailbreaks, opening them up to SD loaded ROMs and a handful of additional cores. In 2021 they dropped the Analogue Pocket, which I would review on this list but I think fits a different niche than the ‘console’ FPGA. The dock not withstanding. The DAC still not working. Zing. I think that if you’re a portable gamer and like FPGA the Pocket is just the only current game in town, so there’s no need to compare it. I don’t like it as a console at all. Double no reason. I don’t own a Duo so I can’t really speak to that. But the Analogue 3D is a Cyclone 10. and I just want to hate on it for a second. The company put a very beefy FPGA in the 3D. Which was likely required because, as I mentioned earlier, N64 is ‘good enough’ on the Cyclone V. But if you want to get closer to cycle accurate, you’ll need more chip than the MiSTer can muster. The irksome bit about all of this is that Analogue is basically the only game in town running the OpenFPGA project. And they won’t enable it on this device, which would be absolutely outstanding at being a MiSTer replacement/upgrade for the $269 price tag. I don’t understand the reasoning, personally, but it’s their company. They’re not selling subscriptions or games or licensed anything, so why throw a limiter on demand up like that? Perhaps it’s just support costs, but what we’re left with is a system that’s got an absolute beast of an FPGA under the hood and can only use it to emulate the worst console shut up THE WORST CONSOLE of that generation.

For what it does and for what it’s marketed to do, it’s certainly best in class at doing that. The overclocking mode is stable and well implemented. The work with 8bitDo (it’s ‘do’ like ‘doe.’ The way of 8bit. Not ‘dew’ like it’s some kind of memory-limited energy drink) on their controller is solid and the system’s build quality is second to none. It feels like premium kit. If the only thing you care about is N64, why don’t you already own one? Otherwise, if you’ve got some cash to burn and just adore the console, this isn’t a bad premium experience. For this one, very silly platform.

Analogue 3D

Pros:

• Great build quality
• Very powerful FPGA for the price
• The best FPGA experience for N64, hands down
• Save states, screenshots
• QoL improvements and graphic improvements
• Upscale (post output)

Cons:

• It just does this one thing
• Still not fully accurate
• Requires carts or an Everdrive, no SD game storage
• Analogue has a moron calculating their shipping costs
• Plays N64 games

Unfortunately, any slight boom in an industry brings profiteers. And profiteers tend to be people of low moral fiber. And people of low moral fiber are anyway this is about Palmer Luckey. Luckey is a giant piece of human garbage and he is releasing the M64. Unfortunately, the N64 core developer on this project is a good person, but holy shitballs, this Smeagol by way of the IDF, Ted Nugent’s Bathtub Raisin Clone, absolute dirt clod of a person running the show makes it an instant no.

M64

Pros:

• Nope

Cons:

• Powered by AMD and the death of thousands of innocent children
• New architecture means cores need to be rewritten, few have been
• Broken initial firmware
• OS has bad HDMI code
• Dude literally makes money from dead civilians

Use Your Conclusion 1

So what’s the best bet if you’re just getting into FPGA? Hands down the winner for a plug and play option, to me, is the Superstation. The RetroPi would be my first pick if it weren’t unlikely to be available any time soon, but for the average person who isn’t in a hurry, I have to go with the Superstation. It’s got a few quirks and is definitely more exciting if you’re a Playstation fan, but even if you’re not, the limitations are offset by the price, the ease of use, and the functionality all out of the box.

If you have the cash and don’t want to wait, the only real game in town is a Terasic DE10-Nano and a build from the various accessory dealers’ available inventories. I’d caution once more against eBay, Ali, and Amazon Marketplace for MiSTer components as in my experience they have trended toward lower quality than I find acceptable. And if you have it in you to wait, go search up the Superstation and get in line. It’s a great deal for what you get. Unless you know you need more USB ports, I’d skip out on the SuperDock. At $40 maybe it’s worth it to you, even in its current state. But never buy anything for the promise of a future update, you know?

Use Your Conclusion 2

Don’t buy shit from arms dealers. No matter how ‘grape’ it looks.

❗The following overview contains SPOILERS for Hades. Reader discretion is advised.❗

Gaming is Hell. From the AI slop and asset flips that pollute low-bar eshops like (checks notes) Switch and PS5 to the ever-climbing dev cycles making 300 hour experiences that demand 100% of your time for the better part of a year. Gaming is Hell.

But sometimes it can be nirvana. In the case of Rock Band, literally.

I’ve never been a fan of -like as a game description. Shorthand can express a ton of information quickly, so it’s useful for conveying a description in an elevator. But it becomes useless as a descriptor in long form reviews or in marketing material. Metroidvania is -like’s granduncle and lost every ounce of meaning the moment it was uttered. What is a Metroidvania? Not Castlevania or Metroid. Castlevania 2 is closer to the modern ideal than the first. Metroid fits the bill, but so do dozens of games that preceded it. And today it’s diluted to the point of kind of meaning any platformer where you back track with upgraded abilities. Almost always 2D, despite Metroid stepping onto the Z axis with GameCube. What’s a Rogue-Like? Rogue certainly isn’t. The concept of dying being part of gameplay is such a minor building block to a complete game, making a genre out of it seems limiting and very, very stupid.

Cards on the table. I hate cards. But I also hate ‘Rogue-likes.’ That doesn’t mean I hate games with the mechanics associated with that shorthand. But I have yet to find a game which has made that phrase a central part of their release push that does much of anything for me. Super Mario Bros. gives you information which makes your next play go a bit further. Just because its buff is your own memory, why isn’t that a Rogue-Like? You must die to get the intel to improve your next run. See what I mean? The whole concept is meaningless due to oversaturation, wibbly-wobbly edges, and mostly, the reductive boxing-in of defining a genre around a single mechanic. I roll my eyes at the term being used in reveals. Or being spat out by denizens of camp GitGud. Or, most egregious of all, on the goddamned box text.

I bring up this annoyance because often - well more often than never, which is too many times - Hades discussions will include the incantation as a way to quickly signal those GG campers to perk up their ears, while the less coordinated, but often more story-hungry of us will tune out. Rogue-like almost had me sleeping on what turned into one of my favorite games of the past 10 years. I almost looked back and watched my love vanish from my vision into the depths of the Underworld. Liam Gallagher would have been so disappointed.

I’ve played a fair number of games carrying the stupid, connotative weight of Rogue-Like and have disliked them all in some fundamental way. At best, with a game like Rogue Legacy, it was an afternoon-waster that didn’t stain my soul, but that wasn’t about to live in my head any longer than it took to see a few level styles. At worst, it was Returnal or similar fare - games that turn progress into a burden because the fall is so far on death that you can’t enjoy the game. You’re watching every step. You’re meticulously scrubbing the entire room for health. You’re not taking any risks and trying to color inside the lines to the point it stops being a game and just becomes Operation Solitaire.

Hades is not that. What Hades is is a game deserving of more than a two word hyphenate. First and foremost, Hades is grounded in its own mythology. Which is Greek mythology by way of a very liberal license. In the best way, I must add. Hades follows Zagreus via the Gantzian theory of Zag’s - his friends call him Zag. It’s cool - lineage; being the child of Hades and Persephone. This diverges a tiny bit from his myth of being reborn after being Stretch Armstronged by some Titans having a bit of a play in the yard, but the bones remain. He desires to escape the Underworld his father has built for the souls of humanity and to join the gods on Olympus. To escape, he must traverse always-changing rooms of scaling difficulty, get random boons from gods and goddesses, and frequently give 1/3rd of a very good boy many, many pets.

The mythology of Zagreus makes him a fantastic vessel for the gameplay mechanic and oxymoron of progressive death. He doesn’t die. Progress is achieved because death is, by his own myth’s telling, just a reset. Additionally, failure does not result in so massive a setback as to feel like lost time. Death (which is what we’ll call it, but not what it is) is progress. Every run gives you a little something. Longer runs become equally rewarding to succeed or to fail. Rooms nearly always contain some helpful item you can take with you after defeat, and as you make it through more rooms, the run becomes more and more valuable upon expiration. It feels like part of the game because it is part of the game, rather than being a harsh punishment. You are also rewarded with unique dialog and grounding story segments between runs, keeping you engaged. You have multiple collectable buckets that fuel multiple progression systems. Some can be used to power up the character. Some can be used to add more boons to the labyrinthine halls of the Underworld. Some are just trinkets or tokens you can give to characters to get additional permanent modifiers for future runs. The dialog is witty, impeccably acted, and very cohesive. There is a whole game upon which the mechanic of progressive death is hung, along side other equally rewarding mechanics. And that, as some poetist once penned, made all the difference.

Beyond the progression mechanics, the game is rich in playstyle choices. A number of weapons become available very quickly and allow for varied options for defeating the wandering horrors in the catacombs of the damned. Ranged, melee, bull in a china shop…whatever your preferred method of dispatching foes, you’re not too far off from unlocking a weapon that allows you to express your desire to re-kill the dead in your own way. The game does not lock you into classes - you can swap at any time. You can play your current mood and mix things up if the wind changes. You never feel stuck in a choice for very long and that makes the experience much more personal and rewarding.

The graphics are beautiful, hand-drawn, thoughtful representations of the core story. Every character is uniquely represented by their art. Yet they are all fully cohesive with every other. The game is unapologetically horny (complimentary). Gods are sex. They are manifestations of the ego interpreting the drives of the id. Hades makes that statement well, without making it gross or skeevy. The game has an absolute lust to it without being a brown paper bag Switch title where Honeys are Popped or Gals are Gunned.

The sound and music are absolute delights. Ambrosia in every word spoken. Thundering beats in time with your attacks give the game a rhythm, intended or otherwise, that really amplifies the experience. The satisfying sound of Zagreus’ dashes, slashes, bashes, and lobs are all tied so well to the animation that even as you’re playing it, the battles seem choreographed. The acting is, as mentioned, top tier. The entire audio experience is truly wonderful and utterly deserving of their many, many award nominations and wins. It’s a soundtrack you’ll want to pick up and put into rotation immediately.

Hades is not an exception to my rule of dismissing rogue-likes. It’s proof that the label bares almost no value in describing a game that has more depth than a teaspoon. To draw the breath to say it, you’ve already given yourself enough runway to accurately depict any game you’re about to besmirch. The jargon does not serve a purpose. It actively diminishes nearly any game to which it’s applied. The fact that Hades and Returnal can both be brought up in the category is enough to disprove it’s worth. But there’s no stuffing that Barbara Eden back into the Michelob tallboy. So, despite my hatred, my message is more for those of us who feel the label is off-putting. If someone voice-vomits that phrase about a new game, wipe it off your shoes and do a little research online before discounting it. While it’s true that usually you’ll find a cheese grater with the words ‘for genital use only’ etched on the side in shaking script at the end of the painbow, sometimes you may find your next favorite game.

I’m going to make a bold statement.
Leaving Microsoft and Apple is fighting fascism.
See? It’s bold!

In a landscape where both companies are selling out their own employees and customers for a speculation bubble around a wrong answer machine nobody asked for, anything you can do to reduce their grip on the world desktop market is - true facts - a strategy against the regime they fund. Both companies have been openly complicit in, and have directly financially benefited from the Trump administration. Benefited in a way that robs the public chest and in a way that funnels more money from their own customer base up the chain without providing any meaningful goods or services in kind. Hell, Tim Cook got a personal gold sticker from Das Uberstench. And both companies have funneled millions of dollars into his pocket in return. Both in direct contributions, indirect ones via PACs, and by laying the groundwork for theft from the masses on a scale that would have been unimaginable, even by the most mad king, a decade ago. AI is a global grift that is going to kill us all, not because the actual product is dangerous. It is dangerous. But the real danger lies in the speculation capitalist vultures…sorry, vulture capitalists…who carve its name into the heads of the spears with which they plan on hunting us. This is a fire sale. Everyone must go. Leave your belongings. Your offerings. To the gods of industry. They have always wanted to wring all of the money out of the fabric of society and they finally have the proper snake oil to oil the snakes of a totalitarian, dementia-addled Polyp Pot. CoPilot needs you to forget how to open an e-mail so it can justify speculation on compute and DC expansion. Apple will do anything to keep you in their garden of antitrust nightmares and hardware rental disguised as ownership, up to and including literally sabotaging your devices in updates. Google wants to suck every ounce of tracking data from you and everyone who looks like you to feed you, the product, the slop their real customers pay them to feed you. There is no publicly traded company that is your friend. To them, we are all prey. On the gaming side of things, the world is not much brighter. Ignoring Xbox, something the world has been trying to do since the Xbox One, Sony and Nintendo also both wish you’d just die and will them your estate. Nintendo takes every opportunity to raise prices and blame anything but their own profit graphs. They sit on a mountain of patents like a dragon, using their brigade of willing acolytes as shields for any critique. Sony kills support for anything that doesn’t turn an instant quarterly profit with little fanfare. Concord, their much hyped copy-of-a-copy Multiplicity clone of Overwatch lasted from August 23, 2024 to October of the same year; the announcement it was being cancelled coming only 10 days after launch.

Removing ownership has deep roots in fascist ideals. The idea that every single aspect of your life is run by landlords, including your entertainment, is just a small tool in a large toolbox of implements to keep the masses docile and indentured. But all normalization is a win for people who feed on the work of the world through dumb luck or birthright. People will defend their hobbies to, in some cases literally, the death and will take up arms in the name of boots if you mention they’re on their necks. Again, this is all by design. Tribalism is the fire that lights the muskets and sunk cost is the black powder within them. Just go online and say a bad word about Elden Ring or Zelda and see how fast you get your digital teeth kicked in by die-hard dickweeds who spend more time falling on swords in real life than wielding them in fantasy ones.

So, if you love games and hate fascism, what are you to do? Give up your hobby and become an angry person with no outlet? I mean, that’s always an option. Trust me, being a curmudgeon has its advantages. But there are alternatives. A great option, which I will surely write about in the future but that deserves its own, dedicated post, is retro gaming. There are more great games from the past you haven’t yet played than you could get to in ten lifetimes. Another is theft. And while I have zero issue with Triracy, it’s also a piece that really needs a longer deconstruction than is allowed in this post. This post is about gaming on Linux.

Linux has not had the best reputation when it comes to gaming. It has powered the OS for a number of consoles, but up until the summer of 2018, Linux gaming was mostly relegated to emulation, manually ported open-source games and a handful of dedicated releases. WINE (Wine Is Not an Emulator) existed and was useful for a handful of light weight games as well as productivity software, but for the most part if you wanted to game on Linux, you had to get source code and recompile or hope that the game developer decided to do it themselves. But in August of 2018, Proton - a joint venture between Valve and CodeWeavers - was released. Without getting too far into the weeds, Proton is a compatibility layer that diverts Win32 and Win64 calls to Linux equivalents and hosts linked libraries to process anything that doesn’t have native Linux support. Windows runs on the X86_64 platform and code assembled to that instruction set can run natively, provided the functions hosted outside of the application are available to it. Proton brokers all of this in a mostly seamless way, allowing Windows-compiled code to run without overhead under Linux. Proton uses the previous work of WINE to host DirectX, Vulkan, Open-GL, and other game-critical libraries. What this means is, nearly every game which doesn’t require kernel-level anti-cheat can be run on Linux at roughly the same (or sometimes greater) framerates as on Windows. The project is opensource, so you don’t even need Steam to run it. But Steam does work great, as well.

The Good

As mentioned, Steam is a great way to play games on Linux. Everything is mostly handled for you. You can purchase nearly every Windows-compatible game and it should run just fine on Linux with nothing but a click of the Play button. You are, of course, still beholden to Steam at this point. And to be honest, Valve is not your friend either. It’s another corporation. The only difference is, Valve has a scoped purpose and seems to be less driven to take all of your money. Just most of it.

You can, however, use their launcher without buying anything and run games through it downloaded from other sources. Itch.io, GoG (now under less evil management), or even - GASP! - CD-ROM! Additionally, there are a number of very nice, very curated launchers out there. Heroic, Lutris, Hydra, Cartriges…the list is long and full of terrors. A decent rundown can be found here. Heroic is my launcher of choice. It provides hosting for stores such as GoG and Epic, allowing you to directly install your games from the stores without downloading offline installers. The larger launchers also generally include database scraping for cover art, descriptions, and settings, allowing a curated list of games without having to manually launch each one, providing a more console-like experience.

Performance can go either way, but in general, my experience has been better framerates - likely owing to more overhead and fewer spyware processes running.

The Bad

Not all games run as easily as ‘just click Play.’ A number of GoG games, in example, require manually adding symbolic links to older libraries for audio. Some games don’t correctly implement their resolution and you end up with incorrectly scaled, hard to read experiences until you can find the right settings. The Desktop Environment you use (or don’t use) can also have a massive impact on your ability to launch games at the correct resolution the first time. Gnome, in example, generally creates a secondary desktop space and includes this in the desktop canvas sizing response to software. So many games on Gnome will show the native resolution as doubled over the actual native resolution. Window managers and compositors such as Hyprland (possibly made by a neo nazi) have less overhead and provide a better dedicated game experience, but sacrifice usability and desktop functionality for Swordfish-style tiling windows.

Configuration can be a pain with older games, as well. Games that utilize 32bit PhysX calls, in example, require extra install steps and configurations to get the full benefit of a card which supports them. Driver support is hit or miss, with native drivers generally offering the most performance, but less support from the manufacturers than the community gives the open source drivers. Nvidia can be trickier than AMD simply because Valve (again, the very sung hero of Linux gaming) uses AMD in their handheld console, the Steam Deck, and therefor has much more quality control for AMD based gaming. Nvidia generally works, but some games are more fussy about it than others. Controllers can be a mixed bag as the big players are well supported, but some X-Input controllers that work a treat on Windows will have incorrect mapping or bad support on Linux.

Overall, the difficult stuff is usually a quick web search away, but you’ll do better to search old forums or Reddit as live interaction with the Linux community is pretty toxic (another post on the ‘to do’ pile). Once you start getting a feel for how it all threads together, though, you’ll be able to self-serve most issues when they do crop up.

The Fugly

Some games just will not work on Linux. Period. This goes for some productivity software as well. Adobe, being a huge culprit of the latter. This is a sacrifice, or a dual boot setup, you’ll have to make to get out from under Microsoft for gaming. Games from Riot, in example, use Valorant anti-cheat software. This is kernel-mode anti-cheat, akin to a root kit. Frankly, for me, this is a dealbreaker anyway. I don’t want kernel mode code that is not part of the OS doing kernel mode shit. But this does cut out some heavy hitters like League of Legends. And unfortunately, there are no options unless Riot games decides to release a Linux-specific build of these games. I wanted to play Project L (presently 2KXO, which is a stupid name for stupid reasons), but am unable to thanks to this incredibly invasive anti-cheat. I didn’t even want to play it multiplayer apart from couch matches, but it doesn’t matter if you plan on going online or not. The whole enchirito is off the table.

Conclusion

Since moving to Linux, I’ve actually been gaming quite a bit more. The reason is mostly because I’m thinking about it. On Windows, gaming is a given. But when moving to a new OS, it’s often on the forefront of thought to entertain the possibilities afforded you in the journey. It’s not all rainbows and kittens and that one rainbow kitten that might grant wishes, but you can never catch it. But it can be worth the trip just to know your hobby isn’t supporting IDF bombing of children, growing the power of a little dick’dtraitor, or giving your money to a company that Thinks Different by literally making 2026 like 1984 after swearing that’s the ONE thing they wouldn’t do. Your mileage will absolutely vary, as Linux is not a monolithic operating system. But switching does make the…WINE… a bit sweeter, none the less.