Game Center Jun

26/02/2026

I was in Manila over the weekend, so I made time to drop by the monthly Geek+Pop Fight Club at SM Makati. If you're looking for great regular local tournaments for current-gen fighting games, this is the perfect place! Great setups and well organized!

The retro tournaments didn't fire (not enough players), so I played a lot of casual matches on the PS4 units instead. There were other setups for niche game casual play as well, mostly running COTW and KI.

It was great to finally meet the Geek+Pop team after talking to them online for so long! 🙇‍♂️🙇‍♂️🙇‍♂️

15/02/2026

07/02/2026

Exploring CRT guncon support on emulation. I do not want to deal with original hardware for lightguns since they all need different controllers and sensor hardware. Emulation is the only way I would ever bother with these.

The official Namco Guncon2 works well on RGBPi OS4, but it's kind of a mess on Batocera! I hear wiimotes and sensor bars work well, but I haven't tried that yet.

30/10/2025

Nakano Broadway, Tokyo. Lots of small toy shops, watch shops, and a LOT of Mandarake stores. A must-see if you like toys (I don't, haha)

Edit: Forgot to mention, it reminds me so much of old-school Virramall in Greenhills!

24/10/2025

Here's something emulators can do that original games can't: run special rom hacks that use the MSU-1 enhancement to use MUCH higher quality music, or even add FMVs to games that didn't have them! Whether that makes the games better is up to you, since higher audio quality can be jarring sometimes. I treat these like Arrange Soundtracks. It's a good option for those who enjoy them. These rom hacks can also be played on original consoles with certain flash carts.

Contra III feels great with music like this. I also have to mention Super Metroid, since the audio upgrade actually gives it a very grim space horror atmosphere. Makes me want to replay it!

19/10/2025

Windows PC with CRTEmudriver + RetroBat + RGB Modded Sony + PS3 Controller with 1000hz poll rate

If you know what you're doing, emulator setups can be REALLY good!

19/10/2025

I've been trying to find better ways to use my CRT emulator PCs lately and I landed on Retrobat. It's tricky to install on a CRT since the installer doesn't even fit inside a 640x480 screen, but once it's installed, it works quite well.

Retrobat is a frontend for RetroArch and many other emulators. It makes managing settings across different games and emulators easier, all while having a nice interface. Great software, definitely an improvement in usability over RetroArch in most ways.

The one advantage RetroArch still has is that it's easier to force a resolution for when CRTSwitchres doesn't do the job correctly (e.g. handheld systems), but for most games and systems, Retrobat is great. The tradeoff of not having to deal with RA configuration hell is worth it!

Now I have it installed on all of my CRT emulation setups, which are just old office computers with old AMD GPUs and hacked drivers that allow them output the low resolutions that retro consoles used. It's hard to explain how accurate these setups look and feel. It's one of those things that you need to see to believe. 😁

10/10/2025

**AUDIO WARNING** The game crashes in the video!

Testing the new TTT1 emulator with rollback netcode! It runs well enough if both players set displays to 60hz but it crashes too much online! It runs much, MUCH better than previous MAME versions I've tried, though. Could be useful for offline gaming when no original hardware + CRTs are available!

26/09/2025

if you know, you know

I made this art many years ago, but I got sidetracked and lost the motivation to restore the stick, partly because it was really butchered by the previous modder. Found the file in a backup drive while organizing and decided to finally finish it.

I bought the lever from Japan when it was first released, but I only installed it a few days ago 🥲 It comes with a circle gate preinstalled. Yikes lol

Razer Panthera OG
Seimitsu LS32 40TH Anniversary edition
Seimitsu PS14 Flat buttons

10/09/2025

2XKO Beta!

This game looks great and plays very smoothly, but my old ass is really thrown off by the modern controls haha! The game also seems to hate this Ugreen USB hub + gp2040 combo I have on this cab. It works when I use a different USB hub. 🤔