The Nerd Next Door

The Nintendo Playstation sounds to the common gamer like a statement that a troll on reddit or Twitter would come up with as joke. But many hardcore gamers know the story that Nintendo and Sony initially were going to make both a CD add-on for the Super Nintendo and an all in one console called the Nintendo Playstation. The project died in 1991 and has been regarded as Nintendo's worst failure, giving rise to their own competition. But what if I told you that through emulation and flash carts, the Super Nintendo CD lives in a very odd fashion? It's an odd thing, I'll need to explain further. We need to go back to the original SNES CD concept and how it sprouted from the Super Nintendo development. In 1988, Sony approached Nintendo with a brand new audio chip for the upcoming Super Nintendo project, a chip created by future Playstation creator Ken Kutaragi. Nintendo bought the chip, which allowed for sample based music to be created and boosted the SNES' audio bey...

After playing through the first Halo, I threw myself back into Jak II in the PS3 Jak and Daxter HD collection, I had previously thought the first game, while unremarkable in 2019 (literally just the PlayStation version of Banjo-Kazooie now that I think of it), was pretty good. Seeing as I owned the PS3 collection, I thought Jak II was worth looking at and goddamn I am glad I did because Jak II is just... well let's get on with it because I have thoughts on this one. Jak II is set about some time after Jak 1 where, while testing a device with Keira, Jak's mechanic (and love interest?) from the first game,  Jak, Daxter, Keira, and Keira's father Samos are hurled into a mysterious land where Jak is immediately arrested with Daxter promising to free him before he knows it. Two years (and a PSP game) later, Daxter finally does it and we finally get a first, Jak talking; and his first words are a declaration to commit murder. Yep, Jak II is the definition of whiplash and Jak...