I've had a clear separation for a while now: Windows is for gaming, Mac is for everything else.* Well, in about an hour of testing I've determined that emulation of older consoles has a permanent home on my Mac. I hate the word "game-changer" but it's hard not to use it when talking about OpenEmu.

OpenEmu is essentially a front-end for other emulators, but no other manual downloads are required. Upon the first run, it asks you which systems you want to emulate and downloads the cores for them. On many systems, you can even dig into the settings and choose which core you want to use. Some people prefer ZSNES to SNES9x for example, and this is an easy configuration change.

The configuration is set to sane defaults but you can modify some advanced settings. Controller configuration is a real treat. As you can see from my screenshot (yes, that's Bible Adventures. What?) you're presented with a view of the controller and you can change what is used for each button. The PS3 controller (which works right out of the box on Mac. If I were more cynical I'd think Microsoft somehow made it difficult to get them to work on Windows intentionally) is automatically detected and configured as you'd probably want to configure it yourself, but you can tweak that as you like. You can set certain buttons to be quick save and quick load as well.

Selecting a system brings you to a list of all the games for that system you've added. You can choose list, covers, or cover flow. OpenEmu automatically downloads box art for anything it can find. It seems to pull from the filename so if you have a strangely named rom it won't automatically find it.

The gameplay itself is seamless. You can play windowed or fullscreen, and in windowed mode you can change the size just like any window and it will keep the proper aspect ratio. When playing a game, you can move your mouse to the bottom of the screen to bring up a toolbar like you'd find in a media player to exit, manage save states, enter cheat codes, etc. Best of all, if you exit and re-enter, it automatically picks up where you left off.

The current stable release has a wide variety of consoles to choose from:

• Game Boy Advance


• Game Boy Color


• Neo Geo Pocket


• NES/Famicom


• Nintendo DS


• Sega 32x


• Sega Game Gear


• Sega Genesis/Mega Drive


• Sega Master System


• Super Nintendo


• TurboGrafx 16/PC Engine


• Virtual Boy

The experimental version has support for many others including Playstation, N64, PSP, a wide variety of Atari consoles, and a ton more. The full list of planned support is here: https://github.com/OpenEmu/OpenEmu/wiki/Console---Core-Plugin-Status-&-Wishlist

It also has native support for many controllers, and some that require drivers to set up (like the XBox 360 controller).

I played various games on NES, SNES, and Genesis, and ripped Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII from my PSP just to test out the emulation. That thing was dusty, but it was worth it. Everything played without a hitch. The graphical reproduction was solid, sound was good, controls were responsive.

In short, I have absolutely nothing bad to say about this. If you're interested in emulating older consoles and have a Mac, especially if you have a controller you can use, you should check it out! It's everything you've always loved about emulators, wrapped up in a nice package to ease configuration, and it comes with awesome features you never thought you'd need.

http://openemu.org/

* Linux is for tinkering. I'd use it on my PC full-time if gaming were stronger, and it's going that direction. If you've been here a while you know how much I adore Linux but as of now it's sitting in between the two opposite strengths of Windows and Mac. I hope that changes very soon.

Through use of the JSMESS emulator system, which allows direct access to these programs in your browser with no additional plugins or settings, these games can be enjoyed again. Simply click on the screenshot or "Emulate This" button for each individual cartridge, and on modern browsers the games will just start to run. As nostalgia, a teaching tool, or just plain fun, you'll find hundreds of the games that started a billion-dollar industry.

Archive.org's Console Living Room has launched, bringing a ton of classic games from the Atari 2600 and 7800, the Colecovision, The Odyssey, and The Astrocade.

These classic games are an important part of gaming history. I'm glad to see Archive.org doing this to preserve them. Those cartridges won't last forever.

To answer your question, yes, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, A.K.A. the greatest game of all time, is playable.

https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom

First off, some loot for you: Left 4 Dead 2 is currently FREE. Just go here and click "Play Now" to claim it.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/550/
Some are saying that you have to actually install it for it to count, so go ahead and do that just in case.

Now then, what kind of loot did you guys get this year? So far nothing gaming related for me, but that's fine. My wife got me a Pebble smartwatch, which I've had my eye on for a while now. I also got some movies and cooking implements from the in-laws. Illness has prevented us from going to visit my family until the weekend.

Are you guys getting into any awesome Christmasy-type events this year?

Merry Christmas all!

Yeah, that face. I had that face a lot.

But I'm not done and if not for a family gathering in a couple of hours I'd be playing it right now. And dying, and cursing, and laughing, and feeling that same kind of frustration and addiction that some of the best NES games gave us.

Yes, the game is hard. But it's not broken-hard it's "Nintendo hard" as it's come to be known. Imagine Super Meat Boy.

If you watch the AVGN's videos you'll recognize a lot of the gaming tropes that he hates. A game based on the AVGN would have to. But the core gameplay is solid, very solid.

The humor is funny at first, and kinda what you'd expect, but after 20 minutes it gets a little old. Every death screen (and you'll see a lot) has a randomly generated list of what the AVGN would rather do than keep playing.

Easy mode gives you infinite lives, and I'm not ashamed to admit I need them. Normal gives you 50, and I just got the achievement for dying 100 times. So yeah, plan on dying a lot.

Overall this is a definite recommendation. If it goes down in price over the course of the Steam sale, you should definitely pick it up if you're looking for a hard NES nostalgia-fest with great gameplay.

Reaper of Souls is coming out March 25, and you can pre-order it now! It costs $39.99 for the standard edition and $59.99 for the digital deluxe edition.

I'll probably wait for the physical version if that's an option. I'd like to see what kind of swag comes with any potential physical version of the game.

One interesting thing to note about the system requirements:
"Requires the Battle.net Desktop App "
Looks like they're ready to move forward with the B.net app. I'm still hoping for the ability to actually use it as more than a game launcher, like chatting with B.net friends outside of games, etc.

More info: https://us.battle.net/shop/en/product/diablo-iii-reaper-of-souls?utm_campaign=d3x-presales

I've been, quite frankly, a bit obsessed with Starbound since it launched. I've been watching the progress for what seems like years now and was thrilled to see the beta launch.

For those who haven't kept up with the development, the beta cycle is going to be in three phases. We're currently very close to the beginning of the first phase. As you should expect, things are very incomplete, some stuff doesn't work, there are tons of bugs, and your character will get wiped a lot.

That said, Steam reports that I've spent 21 glorious hours playing this game, and I could just keep going. Even this early, there's a lot of fun to be had. There are literally millions of planets to explore. As I understand it, each planet will always be the same basic configuration in any game you play, but the ore deposits, chests, and random villages and dungeons you come across are randomly generated the first time you visit.

A lot of the game is like Terraria in many ways. You mine for things to create other things, and so on. But you can also find totally random weapons like in Diablo or Borderlands. There's tech that you can find and equip to give you stat boosts or let you walk around in a mech suit.

I wanted to see what the game could offer without playing so much of it I would burn out and not want to continue playing it. So, I cheated. I gave myself millions of pixels and every time I found a new ore, I maxed my stack so I could build the new tier of items. It seems like we're going to end up with way more armor tiers in this game, and some race specific armors that give different stats to tailor a kind of class based on your race.

There's still a long way to go, though. There's very little enemy variety in terms of their behavior, and even with millions of planets, it kinda starts seeming samey over time. It's obvious that we're still in early beta, but it's also obvious that I'm going to be obsessing over this game for quite some time once it's released.

This video shows a preview of some of the things coming to Terraria in the Christmas update, which should be hitting on December 20. I dunno about you, but I'm really looking forward to the Santank boss.

A PSA: If you launch Terraria now, the old Christmas event is going on. It starts every year on December 15. Don't be disappointed by the lack of new content-- it's coming!

The Steam Universe group has updated with new info about various upcoming events. The 300 lucky recipients will get their boxes very soon-- they're shipping Friday-- and Steam OS will be made available that day.

Check your email today at 2PST to see if you're one of the lucky 300!

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamuniverse#announcements/detail/1930088300965516570

Indie studio Hello Games (who brought us the delightful Joe Danger) dropped this trailer at VGX. The concept reminds me a lot of Starbound, but in full rendered 3D, and including space battles.

First off, this looks absolutely gorgeous. Second, I'm glad to see more exploration-heavy games like this. Procedurally generated planets are sure to give you a ton of replay value.

There's a site up at http://www.no-mans-sky.com/ without much content yet, but I'll be keeping my eye on it. I can't wait to hear more info about this one.

Telltale Games, the studio behind some amazing adventure games like last year's The Walking Dead series, showed a teaser trailer for Tales from the Borderlands at VGX last night. This is a totally new style of game for the Borderlands series, but I could definitely get behind a more story-driven look at Pandora.