MY LIFE IS SHIT
Got some friends together to play through both Files and it's been a blast so far. If you like the old Resident Evils but never had a chance to play Outbreak online or if you did play it online and want to play it again I recommend checking out the fan server on a PS2 emulator.
I run out of shotgun ammo at around 0:30. Watch as I spend the next 20 seconds going to get some more but pick up the wrong box of ammo as I fiddle with the inventory 
I had never really played Outbreak too much back in the day since it just didn't appeal to me as a single player experience even though I loved all the other Resident Evil games. As soon as I heard about the fan server I knew I had to try it out with some friends.
From what I understand the fans reverse-engineered the server by analyzing the packets the PS2 was sending out to the official game servers, not that I really know what that means 
It was just unbelievably cool to get to experience the PS2 online experience 20 years later and I have nothing but respect for the sorts of people who make things like emulation and fan servers possible 
Having done a couple of test runs with a few different friends, I can agree that yeah, the adlib system is cool... but I definitely wouldn't want to have to rely on it. If Capcom made a game like this today (which they won't since they seem to prefer failed live services like RE:Verse or that Resistance thing) a proximity chat system like in Lethal Company would probably be a good fit.
Resident Evil Outbreak File 1 and 2 were the last "classic" style RE games that came out before RE4. They were also multiplayer-focused online co-op games... on the PS2. In 2004. I said "still playable" in the title but honestly, even for people who were RE fans back then, it's probably more like "actually playable for the first time." The fan server is also definitely not some new thing- I think it's been around for like a decade at this point.
If you've ever wondered what it would be like to play an old school survival horror game online with friends, these are the games for you. They're also pretty hard though, even if you're someone who can breeze through every other game in the franchise.
The tutorial I linked goes over through this stuff as well, but you'll need the following to play:
You'll probably also want to wrangle some friends to play the game with you, which in my experience is the hardest part 
I already know it's on its way out, CrystalDiskInfo has been flagging it as "Caution" for like three years now due to the amount of reallocated sectors. I only use it for Windows restoration points since I figure out it's not likely my Windows install and the drive are going to go bye bye on the same day. I'll replace it the next time I splurge on a big hard drive.
After I take the SATA cable out and put it back in: Just kidding I'm fine :)
Oh you little rascal you 
spoiler
Don't worry, I moved all my data off that drive years ago. Not exactly sure why I keep it in my system 
Thankfully it looks that way. I was just disappointed it was once again something specific to AMD hardware.
Turns out some tracks in Mario Kart 8 don't play nice with AMD cards.
Another victory for us Radeon owners 
Yes, both Ryujinx and Yuzu can do multiplayer by emulating the Switch's wireless functionality, though Yuzu's servers have been shut off for obvious reasons. You can still play online on Yuzu through Hamachi or similar though.
Other emulators also have multiplayer, several PS2 multiplayer games are playable on PCSX2 with community servers and there's an entire Xbox Live replacement service for the original Xbox.
Might be fun to mess with some multiplayer Switch emulation with Ryujinx 🤔
Somehow this plain family car makes perfect sense as a collaboration between huge German and Japanese corporations.
But it's not even a cool product placement car 
Well when I say Fortnite monetization, I also mean that the intent seems to be to also buy into existing licenses and throw a bunch of disparate IP together. It looks like they have Spongebob out the gate and plan to get characters based on streamers (ick)... but just to give an idea.
Not gonna lie, that sounds pretty grim
Monetization seems like another thing MK8D has over CTR:NF from the looks of it. From what I can tell MK8D only has simple DLC packs that add more tracks and characters where CTR:NF had a whole battle pass arrangement with the usual loads and loads of ugly skins and cosmetics. When I first unlocked all the DLC and Pit Stop content I went 
at all the ugly character recolors and distracting, animated skins that were suddenly populating my races. Oh cool, it's a green Neo Cortex whose tires leave behind rainbows
(not antinatalist, but do hate mk8d babies)
I don't care for them either. Mario and Luigi don't even have the same art style as their adult counterparts, looking like they're from some European comic book. I actually think the character selection is a bit lame overall in Mario Kart 8D. Maybe it's because I'm not a huge Nintendo head but so much of it is wasted on random generic Mario mooks who don't have much personality. Nintendo has so many franchises but the only ones represented here outside of Mario are Donkey Kong, Animal Crossing, F-Zero and Zelda. Where the fuck is Pokemon??? That's like an entire game's worth of track concepts right there.
There's a pc kart racer in development that looks promising called Oh Baby Kart. It doesn't look as bad as most PC kartracers, at least from early screens.
I probably wouldn't care about a kart racer without an established license even if it was good, sadly. It feels weirdly integral to the entire appeal of the genre
Certain recent events in the emulation space reminded me to emulate some more Switch games, so I got the Crash Team Racing remake since Activision never bothered to bring the game out on PC. Honestly it probably worked out better this way since I could get all the DLC and Season Pass shit unlocked for free
Me and my friends wanted to play CTR online after we found out both Ryujinx and Yuzu had online multiplayer, but since they work by spoofing the Switch's wireless LAN connectivity and Activision couldn't be bothered to make a LAN mode for CTR:NF, we just downloaded Mario Kart instead.
After playing most of the tracks in single player to get my shader cache built for multiplayer and some test runs online, I have to say I kinda prefer Mario Kart's mechanics over CTR:NF's, and this is coming from someone who grew up playing the original CTR and never had Nintendo consoles.
I always found the timing of CTR's drifting and boost mechanics kind of finicky and annoying but in Mario Kart you literally just hold the drift button down to build boost and it feels really easy but satisfying to pull off. It also feels like the game is gently but firmly guiding you along even when you turn off all of the assistance features and that you'd have to be deliberately trying to get completely left behind. In comparison I find myself awkwardly reversing out of walls and corners in CTR:NF fairly often, usually after fucking up a powerslide 
I've had my BSP-D8 (the black controller) for a couple of months now and overall I really like it. In terms of ergonomics and build quality it's a VAST improvement over the D3 (well, mostly) and I would highly recommend one if you're looking for a cheap but decent Bluetooth controller for your phone and can get it for 20-30 dollars or less.
I got my D3 (the red and blue controller on top) back in May last year to play emulators on an old Android phone and while it mostly did the job it was a pretty compromised experience. The sticks and face buttons are tiny, with the latter having sharp edges that combined with the aforementioned microscopic size made it feel like the buttons on a Tamagotchi or a pager or some other tiny gadget. Even worse, to ape the design of a Nintendo Switch, instead of a dpad they just had a second set of these awful buttons, making any kind of dpad-heavy games miserable to play. The shoulder buttons and triggers feel cheap and flimsy (the shoulder buttons especially) with all being incredibly mushy switches, meaning no analog trigger functionality whatsoever.
The company making these is a machine though and by November they had already put out four new controllers building on the original design, the D5, D6, D7 and D8. (No D4 because China). There's already a D9 and I think there's a D10 coming out. These are a bit more expensive though, with the D9 costing about 50 dollars when I checked.
Like I said, the D8 is a huge step up from the D3. This might be mostly because it's pretty much a direct clone of an existing, more expensive name brand phone controller instead of an original design. It feels like an Xbox controller in a telescopic form factor and is really nice to hold in your hands.
The sticks and face buttons are a standard Xbox form factor and feel perfectly fine to use. The back of the box says they're Hall Effect sticks which has apparently something to do with magnets and means they're less prone to develop stick drift. Hall Effect sticks seem to be all the rage now so that's cool I guess.
The triggers are actually analog on the D8 but are shaped more like the DualShock 4's L2 and R2 than Xbox triggers. They're okay and a huge improvement over the D3. The shoulders are the least improved part of the controller, still feeling a bit mushy, but they're still better than the D3.
Most importantly though, the controller has an actual dpad this time around. It's not the greatest dpad ever, with the directions bottoming out and pivoting oddly when fully pressed in but it's certainly enough to make platformers, etc playable and I even managed to play some fighting games with it.
There's a couple of things the D3 has over the D8 though. For starters, the D8's Start and Select placement sucks, with Select being placed above Start below the face buttons, making pressing both at the same time basically impossible. I have no clue why they didn't just copy the placement of the Start, Select and the power/menu buttons from their earlier models. The D8 also lacks the programmable back buttons the D3 has which is a shame.
The D8 does have a rumble feature which the D3 doesn't but it's so comically pathetic I don't think it adds much- not that I have been able to get it to work on in any of my emulators anyway.
As for build quality, the controller feels less cheap overall than the D3, though the print on the face buttons looks very crappy in person. My unit came with one flaw right of out of the box- when you rotate the left stick, it doesn't feel quite smooth with a small bump at about 10 o'clock. It doesn't seem to affect circularity in any gamepad tester I've tried but you can definitely feel it. I'm half tempted to open this thing and see what the stick is catching on but I'm afraid of breaking it.
As for connectivity, the D3 and D8 have several different Bluetooth modes they can boot into with different button combinations, with each one emulating different controllers, including Nintendo Switch and a standard Xinput Xbox controller. You can also plug it in via USB-C to use it wired with a PC or PS3/PS4. Each mode shows up as a separate controller which makes using it on multiple devices convenient.
All in all, as far as cheap Chinese knock-off devices go, the D8 is pretty decent and it feels good enough to use that I've even used it on my PC a couple of times which is something I can't say for the D3. If you are on the lookout for a phone controller for much less than the 60+ bucks the big name ones are going for and can find one for cheap (and are also willing to brave the chances of getting a dud) I highly recommend it.
With the whole Yuzu thing going on I decided it'd be a great time to acquire some more Switch games and finally tried the CTR remake after hoping for years a PC port would come out. Thank you Nintendo for allowing my PC dreams to come true 
I don't know why but they completely fucked up the difficulty. I started playing Classic Adventure mode and spent over an hour trying to beat the second race in the game. I could swear the original wasn't this difficult so I jumped into that really quick and proceeded to beat the first three races in one try. Classic my ass
As you can probably guess, the podium girls did not make it into the remake, which I remember hearing caused a lot of at the time.
They were instead toned down and turned into unlockable racers. Turns out that they and the VAST majority of the game's other new characters are only available through some bullshit online shop which means they will become unattainable in a year or two. Luckily this was easily fixed with a couple of cheat files.
I hate always online licensing DRM schemes 
I hooked up my trusty old Logitech speakers to see if they still worked. They did, so I booted a game and sheepishly turned the volume way down in fear of annoying my neighbors, immediately remembering why I had these stuffed in a closet for almost 10 years.
Even if I lived in a soundproof house in the middle of nowhere I'd still be self-conscious enough to just use headphones instead 
You can even hear him say this in the video. Was that the Jim player actually using his ability? I didn't see what was happening so I thought he was just getting pummeled by the boss