Best and worst gaming hardware I bought in 2018

From my post at shmups:

Best: SD2SNES

It's not the flashcart I needed the most (that would be one for the Genesis), and I'm still slowly collecting all the Super FX and SA1 games anyway, but man, what a treat. And coming from the Everdrive N8, it's just so nice to have a menu that doesn't look like ass and the OK/cancel buttons are actually what I'd expect.

Runner-up: Tendak HDMI to VGA converter. No need for my powered HDfury3 anymore.


Worst: Yet another PS4 joystick: Hori RAP V Hayabusa

To be fair, it is a very good stick, it just wasn't a must-have. I read "the one with the headphone jack was faster" than my old one and then seeing it cheap on eBay I had to get it. Then I remembered this tweet and saw that it wasn't even the fastest Hori... so yeah. At least it pairs nice with my old one which has the exact same shape, and maybe I can have a dedicated 4-way stick now.

Runner-up: Pandora's Box 5. I only found out after I bought it that (1) it wasn't even the latest version, and (2) I could've gotten it cheaper on Aliexpress. At first I didn't like that it was HDMI-only, but that just lets me hook it up to my DVDO Edge easier so I could correct the forced 16:9 aspect ratio. As for the games themselves, there's more wrong than right with them (I mean, even Final Fight wasn't perfect), but it plays Armed Police Batrider well enough for me to scratch that itch, at least.

TLC's Unexpected: Character Rankings

Favorite grandpa: Tim (McKayla's grandpa)... narrowly beating out Fabian

Favorite grandma: Jessica (Chloe's mom)

Least-liked teen dad: Diego... that guy should show some respect to his baby mama's mama

Turned down a job offer today...

Hope I made the right decision.

SSD setup for Wii U

The Wii U supports external hard drives, and it's possible to power them just with USB, without the need for yet another power brick.

The comments in this well-known blog post pointed me to this combination of:

• Samsung 860 EVO 250GB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E250B/AM)
• Transcend StoreJet USB 3.0 External Hard Drive Enclosure (TS0GSJ25S3)

And... yeah, that's all I needed. I just use the USB cable included with the Transcend enclosure and plugged it in the back of the Wii U, no Y cable necessary. 

Hold on, looks like the Y cable really is necessary. The Wii U really didn't like it when I tried downloading things from the eShop. It told me the hard drive was disconnected (it wasn't) and recommended the Y cable. When I restarted, it crashed in the same way at the Wii U menu screen.

For reference, New Super Mario Bros. U and New Super Luigi U was 13 GB. I didn't time how long it took to copy over, but it was probably like 15-20 minutes.

Words I hate (2018-02-15)

• anymore 

As in, "It’s ridiculous, anymore, where you actually..."

Another weird regional phrasing that hurts my brain.

---

Edit from the future! (2020-01-09) Read more in this Fark comments page.