I miss gaming manuals. Yeah a lot of them were just sets of instructions and pretty forgettable, but every so often there was one that stuck out because someone had put the extra effort into it. Like the original Jak and Daxter game manual that had a map that detailed the entire route you took through the game. Or the Zelda Gameboy manuals that had these great illustrations every other page. Now the only reading materials games come with is the TOS and the Privacy Policy. Still, it's nice to see some games using them again, even if they are very niche. I really like the idea of a game that requires a physical manual in order to play it, almost as part of the gameplay. Like the article says it would be a very niche thing, but it would be a great experience.
Tunic uses the idea of a video game manual in such a wonderful way. Its not just a “hey this is what the buttons are, the interface is and a couple of character bios” kind of manual. The devs have made it a core part of the games experience as it guides you through literally the whole game and its secrets without even telling you that’s what it’s doing.
If you’ve not played it you need to experience it for yourself, it’s brilliant.
Like others have said, any file can be dangerous. You need to be diligent in picking where your ROMs come from, if it's a sketchy site don't use it.
That being said I've been doing similar activities since I was like 12 years old and have got a virus exactly once, and it was completely my fault for not listening to my gut (disregarded some red flags because I really wanted something to work.)
For emulators which use recompilation techniques, I suppose it's technically possible to make them execute malware. But writing your malware in legacy XBox/PlayStation code to embed it in roms would also make it some of the most sophisticated in history just to infect a handful of retrogamers so I think it's very unlikely..
Search for some emulating communities and see what sites they have recommended. The ROMs aren't dangerous, but there are dangerous sites that promise ROMs.
It was great because the 3 buttons that were around the diamond (a la GameCube) were programmable and supported macros. Made street fighter stupid easy.
Instead of three grips like a normal n64 controller, it had two. It combined the left and middle grips into one. So the d pad, analog stick, L, and Z buttons were all on one grip. I don't know how the economics would hold up today, but they were great for me back then.
The N64 Hori Pad or he SNES Scoremaster. Not sure if the Scoremaster counts, as it's an arcade stick but I really like how it looks like the console itself.
I was a big fan of the ASCII Grip back in the Playstation 1 days. Used to sit in my room all night playing Final Fantasy Tactics with one hand, and chain-smoking with the other. Not the best time in my life, but at least the controller was top notch.
May want to look into insignia too, its a xbox live replacement, its still a WIP and doesn't support some games, including halo 2 unfortunately, but the games it does support work very well
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