feltmonkey

Here's a Play that I'm shamelessly repurposing from the rllmuk game of the year awards, so apologies to those who have already read it on there.

Batman Arkham Shadow

One of the key things we enjoy about video gaming is the idea that it allows you to become someone else - inhabit someone else's body and live in their world, by their rules. This year video gaming has allowed us to become a small charming robot with a slightly floaty jump, a sad Ukrainian man trapped in a land ravaged by radiation and framerate issues, or the four of spades. The pinnacle of this concept of inhabiting an avatar is arguably Virtual Reality, and the most exciting body to inhabit in modern VR is surely Batman, in Batman: Arkham Shadow.

However, there have been many different kinds of Batmen. There's Adam West’s camp crusader, Michael Keaton’s stiff-necked hero, Christian Bale’s angry billionaire with mental health issues, the grizzled slightly right-wing Bats Frank Miller created for The Dark Knight Returns, Kevin Conroy’s stoic interpretation in the Animated Series, even George Clooney’s version - a confused and disappointed man with irritating friends, a car shaped like a dildo, and rubber nipples moulded onto the outside of his suit, who gives the impression of someone in a state of constant distraction as he tries to think of some way of getting out of the contract he signed. So what kind of Batman will YOU be? Well, I personally turned out to be quite a strange variety of Batman when I donned the cowl in Arkham Shadow.

Here are some of the things I did as the Dark Knight:

I walked around with my arms in front of my chest like Mr Burns, because that is how I have learnt to hold a controller. This caught me out and made me feel bat-shame whenever I spotted my reflection or shadow in-game.

I spent too much time looking down at my body and wistfully remembering what it was like to be able to see past my middle-aged-man stomach to my own crotch.

I dangled upside-down from things without being sick.

I headbutted a man into unconsciousness. This was the most visceral and disturbing thing I've experienced in VR since shooting myself in the head in Pavlov. I don't even know if I was supposed to headbutt the guy. I was frantically following the onscreen prompts in a panic and one came up that I wasn't sure of, and instinct took over. The game was robust enough to interpret my action as something sufficiently violent to knock the poor man senseless. My version of Batman then said “blimey” out loud, before taking a few seconds to process what had happened.

I jumped out of my skin when my son walked through my VR zone on his way to the kitchen and poked me as he went past.

I went to pay phones and checked if there were any coins in the coin return chute.

While there, I rang up several numbers I had found scrawled about the place, as my Batman is braver than I am, and therefore the kind of person who has the sheer courage to ring the random numbers found in public toilets which offer Cock Fun. He's already wearing a rubber suit and wandering the streets at night. He's into that.

I also rang a police helpline asking for information about the masked vigilante known as Batman. After the tone I gave my name and address as Bruce Wayne, Wayne Manor, Gotham City, and confessed to being Batman.

I touched both Harvey Dent and Commissioner Gordon inappropriately. I caressed Dent’s backside while he spoke to me about the city's problems with crime. I don't know about two faces, he's certainly got two lovely cheeks. While Commissioner Gordon was talking to me, I poked my finger into his mouth. He appeared unperturbed, but I felt unprecedented levels of bat-shame.

I have learned so much about myself that I now feel trepidation about going back into the finely-crafted VR dioramas of Arkham Shadow. My version of Batman would be scorned even by Joel Schumacher. I am not the hero Gotham deserves - astonishingly, they actually deserve better.

The RP5 does look good. What about a second hand Steam Deck?

I feel like we've had this conversation before. 😂

If you want something to run PS2, then the R36S is not going to be anywhere near good enough, and would probably be a downgrade on what you have. It belongs in the bracket of the Miyoo Mini etc. It's great for retro consoles and PS1, but as I say anything above that is hit and miss. It will play some PSP and Dreamcast, but not all games on those systems are equal, and performance ranges from "acceptable" to "nope." It sounds like the R40S is kind of similar performance, so it's probably the same chipset in a bigger shell, but I'm not sure.

The form factor isn't ideal, especially if you want to use the analogue sticks and shoulder buttons. I wouldn't have it as my main emulation device, but it is great as something you can chuck in your pocket and not worry about.

Yeah, I find that you have to only buy from the listings that say that thousands of the item have been sold. If it says "9 sold" there's a good chance it's a scam.

If anyone does buy an R36S, then I would say to throw the sd card that it come with in the bin and get a decent branded one instead. You can set up a card with ArkOS on pretty easily. If I can do it, anyone can. It's not as good as OnionOS but it works okay for the most part. It seems to be based around a clunky version of retroarch, from the menus.

Probably a question for Al, but this here:

https://try-retrolink.de/products/retroboy%E2%84%A2?variant=49772228084051

Not asking about the unit itself but the UI shown… what's this running on? Not Android, for sure. I have an old handheld which has a UI that has the same button icons across the bottom, but not the same other bits. Curious as I really like this clean style - I'd probably try to mess about with the old handheld if I knew what it was and where to start. I want to say… something about onions?

That's an R36S running Emulation Station through ArkOS. The R36S is a hugely underrated machine. It's slightly more powerful than the Miyoo Mini Plus and the RG35XX (it can run PS1 easily, and can even manage some PSP and Dreamcast stuff) and you can get one for about £25 on Ali Express.

It can also run the mind-boggling Portmaster, through which I have a flawless version of Super Mario 64 running on mine at 60fps.