The project’s github can be found here: https://github.com/Jay-Day/RMG-K

Believe it or not, it appears the developer/composer NyxTheShield was at the heart of this project. They’re no stranger to programming endevours, having made what was basically Project M for Smash 4. While I’m certainly most interested in this project for its ability to bring a Slippi-like experience to Smash 64, everyone who plays any 64 game is going to benefit from this project as the rollback code really does, by some miracle, support the entire N64 library! I believe HLE might be the source of making this possible but don’t quote me on that.

Top level Smash 64 player Maafia released a video shortly after the projects release talking about everything this update brings with it—I’ll link it down below, highly recommend watching it. Besides the lag reduction, another big feature is fixing desync issues. The Kaillera-based netplay seemed to not address in-game RNG elements and would cause frequent desync. I guess the Gekkonet code goes out of its way to fix this!

At the time of writing, rollback only works on direct connect sessions, meaning there isn’t any matchmaking just yet—meaning you’ll need to send your friends a code to join your game. However, a revision to the matchmaking interface has made it so you can broadcast an ‘open game’ to anyone to anyone using the service, so like what Melee had back in the Anther’s Ladder days. Every client will also have a customizable player ID code—just like Slippi has. You can even ‘favorite’ player you come across so if they’re broadcasting their game, they’ll appear at the top of the list! It’s oldschool, yes. But it’s a HUGE leap compared to what we had before!

If you’d like to learn more about the history of rollback netcode plus how it works, I’ve written a piece here!

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In the world of online gaming, this has unfortunately been the norm for quite some time. Here in the US, I have about 20ms before my machine is talking to faster infrastructure. That means if I’m playing a game online with my next door neighbor, we’ve got 40ms of lag between us plus whatever the server generates. Not every game uses delay-based netcode—but for the action-heavy ones where things need to feel instantaneous, I’d rather just carry my setup down the street!

Smart minds have been knowing about this issue—one of the earliest developers to crack the code and simulate lagless interaction was John Carmack, the lead programmer at id Software (and one of the Masters of Doom.)

Server Authority and Prediction

For PC gamers in 1996, Quake was the most important title to release. Designed around fully 3D environments and fast-paced rocket fire, it’s campaign was considered a masterpiece. When taking the game online however, it was nearly unplayable over a standard dial-up connection. Recognizing that that world’s internet infrastructure would not improve fast enough, John Carmack re-engineered Quake’s multiplayer by introducing QuakeWorld—a host of dedicated servers running his latest invention—Client-Side Prediction and Server Reconciliation.

Instead of using delay to get two networked copies of a game running in sync, each game assumes it always in sync, showing the player their own actions the moment they input them and having the server guess at what their opponent is doing next.

This predictive model is a lot more basic than you might imagine. Here’s how it works:

If you guessed Still holding forward, you’d be thinking like Carmack’s predictive model. The game has no reason to believe you’ll be doing anything in the future that you weren’t already doing a moment ago.

Suppose the guess is wrong and the delay doesn’t know this for 50ms, or ~3 frames. Simple—it changes what the players sees to be 3 frames deep on that action’s animation (like firing a weapon) and tells the game logic to overwrite itself with this updated occurrence. To make this jump in visuals less perceptible, your game interpolates (a fancy word for ‘smooths out’) the tiny bit of audio/visual queues you might have missed. From most players perspective, this change is imperceptible.

This paradigm worked exceptionally well for first-person shooters because human movement in a 3D space is continuous and highly predictable. However, it had a major caveat: players were always looking at a slight past representation of their opponents. This is where ideas like leading your shots comes from—like Yancy told Fry, ‘you wanna fire at where they’re going to be, not where they are.’'

Fighting Games & the Genesis of GGPO

Arcades where the original source of multiplayer for fighting games. Consoles had arcade-quality ports as early as the 90s with titles like Street Fighter 2—but without online support, you still had to go to the arcades to get quality practice. Then came Xbox Live and the possibility of competing like you would in the arcades but at home became a real vision. Unfortunately, many of the leading fighting game developers from the home console era hadn’t figured out how to provide this provide this prediction netcode to their games and so any players trying to go online with their skills had to learn how to play around the lag.

In 2006, Capcom released a Street Fighter 2 port onto the Xbox Live Marketplace. It used the same ol’ delay tactics as the other titles and fans were met with an unplayable experience. Variable latency constantly altered the timing of combos, turning a game of sharp reflexes into a sluggish guessing game.

Tony Cannon, a programmer and co-founder of the Evolution Championship Series (EVO), recognized that fighting games required a completely different approach to prediction. Unlike a shooter, a fighting game client cannot simply interpolate an opponent’s position or guess their trajectory; every frame of an animation dictates hurtboxes, invincibility frames, and collision states. Cannon’s solution was a peer-to-peer predictive architecture called GGPO (Good Game Peace Out), introduced in late 2006, which laid the foundation for Rollback as we know it today.

The key difference between Carmack’s model and Cannon’s model was that in a fighting game, the changes need to happen instantly. Because animations and game states are so layered and intricate, making this work required a strict division between game logic and visuals. You can’t just interpolate a character into the correct position—they need to be snapped into the exact frame and moment in the game’s logic, with all the missing inputs correctly and retroactive applied.

Despite GGPO proving as early as 2007 that a match played across a continent could feel like a local arcade experience, mainstream adoption faced immense resistance for over a decade. This was particularly true among Japanese developers, who dominated the fighting game market. Living in a geographically small country with dense, low-latency fiber-optic infrastructure, developers in Japan did not feel the sting of delay-based netcode as much as the international player base.

However, the resistance was not entirely cultural; it was deeply technical. Rollback netcode can’t be dropped into an existing game, it needs complete separation between logic and visuals. If a game has thousands of unoptimized visual assets tied directly to its physics loops, attempting a rollback will cause massive performance drops, audio glitches, and visual tearing. Retrofitting a game built for delay-based infrastructure requires tearing out the foundational architecture of the software—a costly, high-risk engineering endeavor that many studios were reluctant to fund.

… then the pandemic happened

The turning point for client-side prediction came through a combination of open-source altruism and global necessity. In October 2019, Tony Cannon made the core GGPO library open-source under the MIT license. This removed a HUGE licensing barrier, allowing indie developers and engineers worldwide to study and implement the core rollback algorithms freely.

Who would know that just a few months later, Covid would altered the gaming landscape overnight.

Local tournaments and arcades shut down indefinitely. Games relying on delay-based netcode saw their communities collapse, as playing outside of one’s immediate city was functionally impossible. The demand for robust rollback netcode shifted from a niche enthusiast talking point to a commercial necessity for survival.

This era witnessed extraordinary community-driven engineering feats. In 2020, an independent developer named Jas “Fizzi” Laferriere single-handedly introduced a custom rollback netcode infrastructure called Slippi to Super Smash Bros. Melee. When talking with Woolie Madden on his Twitch stream, Fizzi reveals that majority of the work needed to implement rollback into Melee was already done when the game launched. Lightning Mode, a bonus gameplay mode that plays the game extremely fast, had already created that division between logic and visuals. This was the foundation Fizzi relied on when writing the Rollback code. did not long after, he mentioned how none of his work would have been possible if it weren’t for one Melee’s many alternate fighting modes. Upon release, Slippi proved that if a highly complex, analog-heavy game from two decades prior could be modernized, there was no longer any excuse for contemporary titles.

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Conclusion

Today, the principles of client-side prediction and rollback have achieved total victory across the landscape of competitive multiplayer games. From arcade fighting games like Street Fighter 6 and Guilty Gear Strive to physics-heavy titles like Rocket League, modern network engineering is built on the reality that the internet will never be perfectly stable.

The evolution of netcode is a testament to the power of predictive software design. By treating latency not as a barrier that forces a game to freeze, but as a statistical variable to be predicted, reconciled, and corrected in the background, engineers found a way to outrun the physical limitations of networks. Multiplayer gaming no longer requires players to wait for the world to sync; instead, our machines quietly guess the future, rewriting the past so smoothly that we never even notice the seams.

Also, I interviewed the developer SaikingS last week, go check that out too!

For starters, the combat—oh baby, the combat—is an absolute treat. It’s first-person melee, which amounts to a lot of smacking something and running away, but the constant threat of botching your timing and eating an attack means you’re always just one or two errors away from restarting an area. And this is fine! It grants the developer a lot of leeway in designing the distinct wind-ups and cool-downs of the enemies you face, as well as the unique feel of the weapons you use to strike them down.

Verho utilizes a sort of reverse stamina meter: you need to charge your attacks before they do meaningful damage. Once you release the strike, it comes out almost instantly, letting you rinse and repeat this cycle until you find a good rhythm. Fast, single-handed weapons charge in 0.5 seconds or less, leaving your off-hand free for options like shields and torches that allow for more defensive play or navigational convenience. Slower weapons take up both hands and hit noticeably harder; blocking with them is nothing compared to a real shield, but why block when you can just dance around your opponent’s threat range while charging up a few heavy strikes?

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There’s magic in this game, too—you pick up runes that let you cast various spells if your intelligence stats are high enough. Many early-game spells are straightforward projectiles, with the most useful inflicting lingering effects like Burn or Poison. Some pass through enemies entirely, while others have multiple blasts like a scattershot. By the late-game, there’s no shortage of wildly original spells. Some send ripples across the ground, damaging everything in their path, while others apply an extra layer of elemental damage to your weapon. My personal favorite summoned a floating sword to follow me around and strike any enemy I engaged. There is an immense amount of customization here for whatever kind of magic user you want to be, and I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of all the options.

Rings also play a role, though they mostly provide passive buffs to specific values you care about—health, mana, damage, defense, certain attack types, and various resistances. I didn’t find any that introduced entirely new gameplay elements (like turning me into a dragon or something), but I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re hidden away somewhere out there. Consumables serve a similar, value-targeted purpose. While you do get options like throwing knives and fire bombs, I don’t especially enjoy grinding for finite items—especially not when magic is as accessible as it is here.

Exploring the map was incredible. It reminded me of Dark Souls II the most, in the sense that there are a handful of distinct paths available right from the beginning, some leading to key items and others to entirely new regions. Every so often you’ll hit a grand scenery change where you’re clearly stepping into a new ecosystem. I loved these moments—new terrain, new enemies, and the potential for new gear. Midway through, I started getting a distinct Metroid Prime vibe. You know that specific feeling when you push through a grueling, difficult segment and are suddenly greeted with a massive, expansive new zone to explore?

Speaking of environments and enemies—the art direction this game utilizes is just gorgeous. You can tell the artists were comfortable working in this clearly hand-made polygonal look. The animations, the textures, and the sheer layout of the levels are soaked in this “early 3D was rad as hell” ethos, making everything from ponds and bridges to fountains and caves completely readable without needing the satin veil of nostalgia to excuse how it looks. It’s so... punk? Like the developers are shouting, ‘I don’t care what you think of my ideas, I just NEED to get them out into the world!’

Okay, think I want to pause here. Check out my video where I show off how to get the Karath Tablet!

There is a specific genre of 3D platformer that takes players to much darker, more dangerous locales than the Mushroom Kingdom. They remind me of those brilliant sections in Half-Life 2 where it feels like you’re breaking out of the map, only to spot a barnacle hanging just ahead and realize the entire thing was a beautifully curated set piece. I first discovered this subgenre through Lorn’s Lure, and reading developer interviews eventually led me to NaissanceE. Then White Knuckle came out (which I still haven’t played), and it hit me: there’s a whole world of these atmospheric games out there, even if I don’t quite know what to call them.

Idols of Ash fits this description perfectly, and in a fantastic way. In fact, it introduces a mechanic to the genre that I haven’t seen executed meaningfully before. Move over, Breath of the Wild glider—here, we’ve got a hook and a rope that allow us to descend cliffs in a deeply unnerving manner.

The premise is simple: you must make your way to the bottom of a cave in hopes of... finding someone (go play the game if you want to know more, it’s only $3). Periodically during your descent, you’ll come across urns that “breathe life” into you, serving as checkpoints for when you inevitably plummet toward your demise. If you fall and survive, hooray! A portion of your health bar will deplete, but you can refill the meter by collecting wisps of life floating above the corpses of previous climbers. It’s not a gory game; the bodies are artfully depicted as humanoid shapes wrapped in some kind of cloth. Hmm, I wonder what that’s about…

We aren’t the only living things in this cave, however. You’ll only catch glimpses of it from time to time, but when you do, you’d better descend faster than you ever have before. I won’t spoil the mystery in writing, but you might catch a few hints of it in my successful Nightmare Mode run linked below. (Spoiler: Nightmare Mode requires you to beat the entire game in a single life—and you may or may not unlock more maps upon completion, but who’s to say?)

The longer you play, the more tech reveals itself—creative ways to interact with the game mechanics that open up entirely new options for climbing. I even invented a move myself, which I call ‘The Crazy Man.’ It’s when you cut your rope and, instead of landing safely on a surface, you hook onto something nearby mid-air to keep descending. It’s incredibly useful for those moments when your partner is watching you play and you want them to tense up and gasp.

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The Setup

Fast forward to May 9th, where the Colorado Melee scene hosted Altitude Sickness 3. With 235 entrants and a Melee bracket so densely packed with talent it earned the weight of being called a National, the atmosphere was already electric. While Junebug was brought in for their exceptional commentary, their unique position as a top-level DK specialist provided a rare opportunity: a high-stakes show match against the state’s most talked-about rising star. What followed was arguably the most high-profile Donkey Kong ditto the scene has ever witnessed.

If you haven’t watched the VOD yet, I strongly suggest you do so before reading further—you can find the link below. Consider this your final warning: spoilers ahead.

The Reality of the Throne

The most convenient narrative for this set would be a simple coronation: the winner claims the title of “Best DK in the World.” It’s the classic underdog story of the new blood challenging the old guard, especially with Junebug stepping away from his active competitive status. However, framing the match this way ignores the logistical reality of the rankings. Unless Junebug remains active or Dial M surpasses June’s 19th-place rank on the 2025 MPGR, a single show match can’t objectively settle the “Best in the World” debate.

Beyond the rankings, the nature of the Donkey Kong ditto complicates the “Best DK” claim. The matchup occurs so rarely at the top level that a player can be the best in the world against the rest of the cast without ever mastering the intricacies of the mirror match. Their true value as players is best showcased when they are squaring off against the high tiers, not necessarily each other.

The discrepancy in their playstyles further muddies the waters. They represent two opposite ends of the DK spectrum: Junebug plays a reserved, clinical Kong - reminiscent of Wizzrobe’s methodical Captain Falcon - while Dial M favors an explosive, high-risk approach. Much like “S2J” Johnny Kim, Dial M prioritizes speed and raw threat, forcing opponents to respect heavy-hitting options or risk being sent offstage early. Because one style might naturally counter the other in a vacuum, the set becomes less a definitive ranking and more a specific study in how these two philosophies collide.

The Architecture of a Champion

Dial M may have the faster hands, but Junebug’s win illustrates the difference between technical skill and set management. Winning a First to Five requires more than just high-damage sequences; it requires the stamina to dismantle an opponent's confidence game by game. By the end of the set, it wasn't just about who played DK better, but who understood the player across from them more deeply.

This depth of understanding was echoed in the post-game interview, where Junebug compared Dial M’s trajectory to the relentless growth mindset of a player like Zain. Junebug’s prediction - that Dial M is on a path toward the Top 20 or even Top 10 - reframes the loss not as a failure, but as a necessary step in an evolution for Dial M that is only just beginning.

Perhaps the most staggering realization is that Dial M is doing all of this at just 14 years old. Junebug has been honing his craft at in-person events longer than Dial M has been alive, yet the young phenom is already meeting that veteran standard head-on. In the end, adaptation and the willingness to grow will always champion a single moment of raw ability. Dial M may not have walked away with the set, but by proving he could push a legend to his limits, he achieved a feat grander than any “Best in Class” title could ever confer.

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Leave it to the PCGamingWiki community to "compile" a definitive directory of restoration projects for classic games. Many of these feature unofficial PC ports - just look for Playable or Complete written in the status column.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_unofficial_ports

A few that leap out at me:

• Silent Hill: The Arcade - Believe it or not, this light-gun arcade game actually has a real story! A group of kids traveling to Silent Hill to investigate occult claims gets mixed up in the town’s supernatural happenings. It looks like it takes about an hour to finish and supports co-op play as well.

• Half-Life: Decay - This was the "secret" third expansion originally exclusive to the PS2 version of the game. It’s another co-op title, and while there are several ways to run it on modern hardware, the mod by user $am_I_Am seems to be the community favorite.

• Lego Island - Oh, how I miss this one! I ran into a bug as a kid that blocked my progress, and since it’s a PC title from 1997, getting original copies to run on modern systems isn’t something I’ve thought too hard about. It’s rad to see that those accessibility hurdles may have finally been cleared.

• Skate 2 - This is the wildcard pick I didn’t know I needed until now. With the Xenia emulator gaining traction, a project emerged using recompilation tools inspired by the N64 recompilation scene. The team forked those tools, and while their GitHub hasn't seen public movement in about a year, I’m hoping that just means they’re heads-down in private development. I’d love to see the original Skate games playable on PC without an emulation layer—also, is anyone still playing Skate 4?

• Mega Man 64 - This was what actually prompted me to write this article! Being a port of Mega Man Legends, a beloved PS1 title - the 64 version arguably ran smoother but had more rougher edges thanks to limited cartridge space. The PC port fixes all that by keeping all the improvements like better render distance and native analog support while allowing for mods to re-implement the PS1 pixel art textures and audio!

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We’ve entered a land slide era of decomp/recomp projects, the latest being arguably one of the biggest yet - Twilight Princess on the Gamecube! Decompilation for this game actually wrapped up in late 2025 and shortly after a few different teams began porting it to PC. On May 9th, the Twilight Realm team successfully launched Dusklight - the v1.0 released candidate that decompiles your copy of Twilight Princess into something your PC can natively run.

The Twilit Realm Github can be found here: https://github.com/TwilitRealm/dusk

At the time of writing, v1.1.1 is the latest release and it’s arguably a huge one! A few that I’m going to use as soon as I boot up the game next are…

• Custom keybings for Turbo (use to be Tab exclusive)

• D-Pad menu navigation

What does Dusklight do?

• Lots of video options - internal resolution scaling, higher frame rates, and modern resolutions support - including 16:10 for Steamdeck and 21:9 for ultrawide.

• Quality of Life enhancements - faster saving, faster climbing, better lighting

• Customizable controls - gyro aiming, lots of sliders and button remapping, native support for GCCs

• Classic Mode - For if you want it to feel just like it did on the Gamecube. 4:3 aspect ratio, 30fps lock and 2000s era lighting effects

I was playing last night on my OG Rog Ally and was amazed to see the game running at 120fps, 1080p with a TDP as low what Celeste uses. I think this means they did an EXCELLENT job of porting the decomp. They didn’t rush this one out.

My comment I read - someone on Reddit asked what the lowest spec device that could run this might be. Top comment was the Gamecube.

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First off, congrats on launching! I love your game so much. I can’t imagine how much effort it took. It’s officially been out for six months now, how does it feel?

I feel really good! Before release, we had written out what theoretical Worst, Mid and Best scenarios post-launch could be. So far we are in the middle of Mid and Best so I’m really happy about that! It’s also amazing seeing people playing the game and giving their thoughts and feedback.

Kasur Games, the studio listed as Verho’s developer, has released more than just your game. How did your project get picked by them and grow into a team of people?

I think of myself as the leader of the Verho team within Kasur Games. The studio founder and CEO, Tomasz Rusak, actually reached out about funding after the first year of development. That’s how Verho officially became a Kasur Games project.

When it comes to my team, I did start off as a solo dev. Soon after work began, I invited Valentino Cervini onto the project to do musical composition. We’re good friends and have done lots of other projects together - most of which can be found on my Itch.io account. Not long after that, I met Angelo “Grave” Petrilli on the King’s Field subreddit. We talked and he offered to handle sound design, thus joining the team! Close to the end of development, my friend Łukasz “Kaku” Fetliński joined. He helped with modeling some weapons and environmental assets so I could focus on polishing the final product.

Is King’s Field-like an okay term for describing your game? How do you feel about games adopting that sort of a description?

I’ve been calling this style of game King’s Field-like before I heard other people calling them that, so I like it! I think it’s a cool term even though these days a lot of people have switched to calling them Field-likes. Overall, it’s difficult to perfectly describe this genre of game, similar to Rogue-likes and Souls-likes. Everyone has a different definition of what these games truly are so it will probably stay this way. Who knows, maybe in a few years someone will come up with a more exact definition for King’s Field-likes and we’ll start saying that.

I bought my copy in a Steam bundle that included Monomyth. Now I see you can grab a copy along with Fly Knight and several others! Is there a secret King’s Field Kabal? Or is this just an amazing time to be a fan?

Most of that’s from devs I befriended while making Verho. We’re in an era of King’s Field-likes and will probably see more in the next 2-3 years. The question is how long people will be interested in them - I hope for a long time because I’ve always loved playing them!

I was getting shades of the Shadow Temple from OoT in one of your game’s areas. As well as navigating the sands of Gerudo Valley! Would you mind revealing some of your undying inspirations?

Fromsoft and Zelda were some of the biggest for sure. Another strong one is the Gothic series, especially the first 2 games. Lunacid by Akuma Kira felt huge, as did the King’s Field games themselves! I’ve played all of them including both Shadow Towers and Eternal Ring. I want to grasp the essence of those games so I can make things fans of them will enjoy.

Yariv (the setting of Verho) is a place with so much history. Entire generations have passed and shaped its structure. Everything about it felt so three dimensional and alive! Truly amazing work - have you always been a world builder?

I just like making stories and universes. I have three to four big ones that I’ve written but never used. Maybe one day!

The first thing I conceptualized about the Verho universe was the Curse of Faces [a curse that forces residents of Yariv always hide their face, lest they catch a glance of someone else’s face and die instantly.] Then I just kept building on the gaps and plot holes. There’s actually even more lore to the world than what’s shown in-game Some of it you can see in “Verho - Curse of Faces - Behind The Mask”, a lore series on YouTube we made with CobraTekku Games, our publisher. Some will be shown in expansion and future games. I have big plans for that world, but time will tell how I will be able to show it to everyone.

Every location is so unique, undoubtedly hand crafted with love. I imagine most fans could see a screenshot of a random wall or corner of a structure and be able to pinpoint exactly where on the map that is. I’m dumbfounded - how did you pull this off?

That’s funny! But a lot of Verho’s uniqueness is the product of me being kind of a bad 3D artist. I had never done modelling before so I just started making assets. I learned Blender for Verho. The more I did it, the better I became! A lot of cool things were actually the effect of me struggling to make something else. I’d need to pivot and would sometimes just let my imagination go wild!

When it comes to the process, usually I draw a map of the area first, then start modeling. A negative side effect of that is that many of my maps turn out flat, something I’m kind of regretting and wish to fix on future projects.

There are a staggering amount of weapons and runes. Player customization is extensive, just about every play style seems viable and enemies just keep getting harder and harder. What was balancing all this like?

Hmm, that’s a hard question. First of all, I believe I’ve finished the game with every build possible. I’ve run through it at least 15 times, including using a level one build. Second, I have a lot of spreadsheets. Stats, simulations, what the average experience level, health, mana and even damage per second should be in a given area. The final thing is player feedback. Even after steps one and two, there are always elements that feel too weak or strong, so I’m always listening to what players are telling me!

The Omens were an enemy who stuck with me - the flying skeletons who teleport around the player and attack with moves that require 360-degrees of awareness. How you ended up on this design? They’re really satisfying to fight!

It started with their concept art. When modelling, I decided to switch their skull heads for masks and made abilities based around each one. Foggy Borrows is also a pretty empty area so I was able to have enemies that can teleport and go through long distances.

I felt a little overpowered late game, using a three-hit combo that swung for 1500 per ‘turn’. Have you crushing builds from people in your community?

Yeah, I’ve seen a lot of busted builds. I think it’s part of the fun , being a little overpowered in the late game! Especially if you explore a lot, do all the game’s content. It’s a part of the Field-like identity.

I imagine releasing Verho and living to tell the tale feels like sitting on top of a mountain, your perspective is more all-seeing than anyone could imagine. With your newly earned insight on life, do you wish to continue making games? Any plans for your future?

I wouldn’t say I’m sitting at the top of a mountain. If so, then I can see MUCH bigger mountains around me! Kira having made Lunacid, Deep Denizens working on Hark the Ghoul, Freshly Baked Games making Queens Domain. So many others! I aspire to keep making better games until I’m on their level.

For the soon-to-be projects, it’s not a secret that I’m working on Verho DLC. I hope to release that later this year! I’m also releasing Bonehold in July, that is my side project [being co-developed with Bloodcorvus, a dev who worked on the game Blood West]. After the Verho DLC, I would love to make the next Verho game - if it will be possible!

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Once again, I owe a huge THANK YOU to SaikingS for indulging my curiosity with this interview! I can’t say enough good about the game he put together - go buy it and play it on Steam right now, if you haven’t already!

Released in 2000 by the underrated team at Contrail, who gave us Legend of Legaia and Wild Arms 2, Tiny Bullets is a 3D platformer that feels like a love letter to two giant franchises of that era. Despite being a first-party Sony publication, the game never left Japan—not even when it was re-released on Japan’s PSN for PSP and PS3.

It features the environmental puzzle-solving and “boy-on-an-adventure” aesthetics of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but mixes it with the tank-controlled platforming and ledge-grabbing mechanics of Tomb Raider. You play as a young boy trapped in a massive, demon-infested tower, armed only with a slingshot and specialized “tiny bullets” (hence the name) used to manipulate the environment and take down bosses.

Big thanks to the translator known as Chapu for releasing this one! They’ve gone out of their way to provide:

• Full Dialogue Translation: Follow the story of the tower and the demon Gudia.

• Graphic Overhaul: Menus, items, and UI elements have been localized.

• Cutscene Subtitles: No more guessing what the cinematic FMVs are saying.

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Version 1.1 can be downloaded here: https://romhackplaza.org/translations/tiny-bullets-english-translation-playstation/

DK’s dash attack is one of the most misunderstood moves in Melee. Many believe it’s Donkey Kong’s worst and I understand why they’d think that. But today I’d like to set aside preconceptions of the Kong’s foot and focus our attention on how it’s actually stepping.

The strong hitbox of dash attack comes out f9 and is the slowest of all his normals. On f12 it switches to the late hitbox and on f21, all hitboxes are gone. It’s not until f54 passes that the Kong becomes actionable, making what’s suppose to be a burst attack option as slow as a smash attack when whiffed.

But let’s say you do get the hit, what happens next?

Both hitboxes will pop the opponent up and slightly forward. It’s one of those moves that actually knocks you toward your opponent, up and over their head like a Samus or Peach down smash. DI’ing away is going to keep you in front of DK while DI’ing straight up will move you slightly behind. DI’ing toward the move will send you FLYING over DK’s head - a quarter to half stage lengths away. I could see this being a great reverse option when getting up from ledge.

My guess is that because of how much endlag DK experiences, the designers wanted any opponent hit by the move to feel just as immobilized, thus they cause it to inflict incredible amounts of hitstun, between 47-55f of stun at reasonable percents. This gives DK between 2-14f of advantage under the rare circumstances that he can actually follow up, because the knockback for this move is really quite weird.

Your characters gravity variable dictates how high up they fly. I sort of lump them into two categories - those who get knocked onto platforms and those who exit stun still in the air. Consulting the SuperCombo wiki and scrolling down to Gravity, most everyone above Marth on this list I would place in the ‘gets knocked onto plats’ list. Marth and below are where I’m going to assume them airborne after hit. Something to note about the plat landers - if they don’t land on a plat, they can almost always double jump before hitting the ground. This includes Fox, Falco, Falcon, Shiek. If you notice they aren’t doing this and giving you a tech chase, capitalize on this opportunity. It won’t be true against everyone, but we kind of need to turn any chance into an opportunity we get with this move!

For the record, you have to get Jigglypuff to 400% before she dies off the top of Pokemon Stadium from dash attack. DK’s short hop up-air kills her at 90%.

Now lets discuss the funny business that comes from late hitboxes, CC’ing and ASDI-down.

One of my favorite qualities of this move is how long the hitbox lingers. Its late hitbox, which lasts the final 2/3rds of the move’s activity, is something people will often just run into assuming you’ve already whiffed what you were going for. Instead BOOM! Foot meets face and you’re at another advantage.

Believe it or not, the late hitbox has set knockback, meaning you could totally lab out its uses for combo starters or kill confirms in different matchups. Think of it as about 20% the knockback that a low percent strong hit would do. Stun timing’s might arguably be better, with stun duration being decided by weight - 38f for Bowser the heaviest, 51f for Pichu the lightest. Most of the high tiers will be around 43-46f of stun. This makes follows up against floaties a little easier but that goes both ways. If they recognize what happened, you might want to hold shield incase they come down on you with an aerial but if you suspect they don’t know, you’ve got the change to decide which aerial to punish with. Late hits that send a spacy off stage surely have some gimp potential, so get creative!

CC is where things get pretty bad for DK. If the opponent Crouch Cancels the dash attack, they’ll go less far and become actionable before you by about 10f. CC’ing the strong hit is the worst that could happen, even a Puff could recognize the situation and land on you with an aerial. Late hit is potentially a little more forgiving. Most characters will be low enough to the ground that their aerial might not come out. Still, most could just wait to land and hit you with a quick, strong option pretty safely.

Sometimes you might notice a dash attack instantly knocks them down without ever popping them up. The only way this can happen is if they’re using ASDI down in tandem with CC. I haven’t learned the dark magic that is floor hugging, but if you think your opponent has, you might want to just say thankful for this knowledge about their play style and stop using dash attack in neutral. Any character at any percent can implement this hard counter, follow up with a tech in place then banish your stock to the shadow realm.

Now that you know all their is to know about the leader of the bunch’s fat foot, are you curious about how to use it better? Me too! But I haven’t labbed that sort of thing out yet. Toss me a sub to help me dig deeper (a sub is one fuel unit in my data mine!)

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Sources:
https://ikneedata.com/calculator.html
https://meleeframedata.com/donkey_kong
https://wiki.supercombo.gg/w/Super_Smash_Bros._Melee/Attributes

The PlayStation 2 really is the system that keeps on giving - home to some of the greatest games of all-time and some of the deepest cuts in any digital spelunker’s hidden gems list.

Even though Hungry Ghosts has looked terrifyingly gorgeous in screenshots since its release back in 2003, potential fans of the game haven’t been able to sink their hungry teeth into the title unless they were willing to learn Japanese or experiment with OCR tools. Thanks to the work done by HGFanTrans on Twitter, you can now play Hungry Ghosts start to finish completely in English!

Despite flying under the radar, this game boasts an impressive pedigree. According to a translated Famitsu article preserved here, former Capcom legend Tokuro Fujiwara - the mind behind Sweet Home and Ghosts ‘n Goblins - directed the project alongside his team at Deep Space. Regarding the game's philosophy, Fujiwara noted: “I wanted players to experience it not as a spectator, but with their minds and bodies. Since the game is set in a world impossible to experience in reality, the concept was to allow users to discover a completely new plane of existence.”

Kings Field inspired, Dungeon Crawler-esque, something something Japanese afterlife. If any of this language sounds appealing, you really ought to do yourself a favor and at least watch a Let’s Play. At least, in time more Let’s Plays of Hungry Ghosts will exist. We’re kind of on the cutting room floor with this one, you and me.

A link to the translation patch can be downloaded here, and if you need an installation guide, Literalmente has written a pretty great one here.

I think it's pretty reasonable to lose some drive as you get older. Life becomes easier in some ways - and with that ease comes the comfort of routines, of falling back into things you can reliably provide for yourself. It’s like taking an emotional deep breath and choosing to stay there for a while.

But eventually, when you try to step out of those everyday motions - the ones you've started defaulting to rather than actively choosing - you may find yourself reaching for goals that are either too big or too small. The big ones overwhelm you, go unfinished, and leave you frustrated. The small ones end too quickly, and you're left wondering if you have to start the whole cycle again just to feel something.

So how do we find the “right-sized” tasks? I think the answer is a bit more nebulous. It depends on cultivating the kind of trust and curiosity we had as children. We should pursue things where the outcome isn’t obvious - where the reward isn’t something we can clearly define. If someone asks what life will be like when we finish, our only honest answer might be, "happier."

Nobody can predict the future, yet many try to play fortune teller with their own lives. They chase goals that sound like they’ll lead to happiness, or avoid starting anything at all because they’ve stopped thinking about what brings them joy in the moment. But curiosity is what gives people courage. And nothing is more strong-willed than the mind of a child.

Spend more time doing things that reconnect you with who you were before the world expected so much of you - before the job, the bills, the obligations. That version of you still knows how to wonder.