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Friday Fun Thread for July 10, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Video Game Thread

What are you playing? Did you pick up anything great in the Steam summer sale?

I'm working my way through Half-Life (1998) and its expansions. It's pretty great even beyond the nostalgia, and I like the general feel of the engine and how you move around in it. Even the much-criticized Blue Shift is kinda fun. The engine was always one of the main strengths of HL and played a large part in its many mods' successes too, IMO. I'm playing with the 'original models' because I prefer how those weapons look and sound. I tried Black Mesa again briefly but I don't really like many of the changes they made. It's not a faithful remake.

Just put a picoboot in a gamecube; i've been playing crazy taxi and star fox adventures. good nostalgic times.

Picoboot is a RPi2040-based modchip, do I understand that right? And the main thing you can do with it is play burned games? Just thinking about whether I need to do this myself, or whether my softmodded WiiU is going to be enough to keep me busy.

Yep exactly. It's got a clever little ribbon cable that inserts between the board and the disc drive, so it retains disc drive functionality unlike some of the past mod chips. It can run burned games, various cheats can be loaded in, and in theory you can boot up the gameboy player attachment without the startup disc (haven't tried that yet).

A softmodded WiiU should be able to run most of the same games, as I understand it.

I happened to pick up a gamecube for cheap at a thrift shop and wanted to do something with it. I've got a Japanese WiiU in my project closet and plan to softmod it eventually, but with the language stuff I think it'll take a fair bit longer.

Very cool. The WiiU is a lovely little machine because you can emulate so much with it. Underappreciated in its day.