I haven't used it since the 1.16.5 days but it worked perfectly fine for vanilla back then and I'm sure it probably does now too.
If you have more questions after you read a bit more about it feel free to drop them here.
If you/the kids are playing vanilla look into Geyser as it allows Bedrock and Java players to play on the same server.
If it's early release it's a warehouse leak most likely that then gets dumped from a modded console (xci format). Some users convert xci to nsp for reasons unknown to me. Might be that switch cartridges have extra padding at the beginning/end that can be stripped to reduce file size.
Otherwise it's just a standard dump from a modded console in either eShop (nsp) or physical (xci) format
As someone who used to write extensive notes in the margins of books digital notetaking has forever replaced physical books for me.
E-ink all the way
A couple of options worth knowing about since I don't know/own the games:
- A DRM free version looks like it's available at GOG. This is probably the simplest solution to not have to worry about any potential issues
- People seem to be reporting that the Steam version can be launched directly from the executable bypassing the launcher. If there is a Steamworks DRM check you could always use Goldberg's steam emulator to get around that for fully offline play.
I say at the end that we'd probably immediately use those powers to revert back to better working conditions (WFH).
I can't see any scenario where this doesn't happen immediately and was mostly just riffing at the absurdity of thinking companies would implement these things (outside of maybe free lunches) in order to empower labor (to the company's shareholders' detriment) willingly.
Some things that would make me consider it:
- Free high quality lunches every day
- Transportation compensation in the form of both work time (if the office is poorly located) and monetary compensation for transportation expenses
- Management improvement plan with actions they're taking/implementing to reduce the time they're wasting of laborers on a day-to-day basis
- Alteration of the company structure to force a large percentage (simple majority) of ownership to workers to push back against reactionary and profit-driven anti-labor whims of shareholders
- Services/compensation that complete tasks that previously I could do during downtime at home
- Yearly inflation-pegged CoL raises that apply to every laborer in the company before salary raises are made
- Massive investment in in-office employee training programs in the form of role-based training that is chosen by laborers in that particular role/function
If every single one of these things were implemented I would then still probably leave the place for another WFH job if we didn't use our new ownership powers to revert back to WFH immediately.
Here are some educational resources/explanations for the games community about emulation and other game-related tools.
Note: Check my top-level replies in this thread as I ran out of text in the post
[Informational Resources]
[Emulation as a field]
Emulation is the process of re-implementing the functionality of something (hardware and/or software) in a separate software environment. You're probably most most familiar in the term as it relates to game system emulation- like the Dolphin Wii and Gamecube emulator, but it's actually much broader than that.
While emulation does cover physical systems, it can also cover things that strictly exist as software (for example, the recent server emulator created for Genshin Impact). If you've ever played on WoW or any other MMO private servers, the actual underlying software that was being run was likely a server emulator (or in rare cases the actual official server software itself may have leaked or released).
These server emulators are created by analyzing the network information exchange (packets) sent from the game client to the server and those received by the client from the server. A painstaking and brutal process of analyzing these packets allows server reverse-engineering projects to then re-implement the functionality of the official servers, and then we can point the game client towards our reverse-engineered private server (that speaks the exact same "language" as the official servers). This then allows the private servers to provide additional or changed functionality (for example, more exp per quest) which allows a much more customizable experience.
Emulation can also be used to re-implement vendor solutions like the Steam API which provides various utilities like DRM (which the emulator could choose to ignore). A great example of an emulator in this regard is the Goldberg Emulator.
Let's say you've acquired (through legal purchase only of course) the clean steam files for a game and want to run it offline. Normally you wouldn't be able to because the steamworks DRM check wouldn't be able to authenticate against the official steam servers. If we instead replace the steam_api.dll (this could also be named steam_api64.dll depending on the game) with the one provided by the Goldberg Emulator, when the game makes the check for the steamworks drm authentication status, the Goldberg Emulator's implementation of steam_api.dll will simply return true and let us play our game offline. The game itself just knows that it asked for a DRM verification check to a service, and the Goldberg variant of steam_api.dll looks (to the game) exactly like the "real" version, except that it always returns that the steamworks DRM has been verified.
Refer to the readme within the Goldberg project for more information about what to do with specific games. Also take note that this only works with games that only use steamworks drm (most of them) and games using other/multiple DRM solutions won't work with this method only for offline play.
[Console Emulators]
All of the emulators listed below are my personal per-console pick. Each is at least in the recommended section of a great general emulation resource, the Emulation Wiki
Game Platform | Emulator Name | Emulation Platform | Comments
Nintendo Consoles
NES | Ares | Windows/Linux/Mac
SNES | Ares | Windows/Linux/Mac
SNES | bsnes-hd | Windows/Linux/Mac | Widescreen modifications for some SNES games
N64 | Simple64 | Windows/Linux | N64 emulation has a lot of viable candidate emulators, check the page here
GC | Dolphin | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android
Wii | Dolphin | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android
Wii U | Cemu | Windows/Linux
Switch | Ryujinx | Windows/Linux/Mac | Has a free multiplayer-enabled build called LDN 3.1.3 on Patreon
Switch | Yuzu | Windows/Linux | Less accurate emulation than Ryujinx but generally more performant
Nintendo Handhelds
GB/C | mGBA | Windows/Linux/Mac
GBA | mGBA | Windows/Linux/Mac
DS | MelonDS | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android
3DS | Citra | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android
Sony Consoles
Playstation | DuckStation | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android
Playstation 2 | PCSX2 | Windows/Linux/Mac
Playstation 3 | RPCS3 | Windows/Linux/Mac
Sony Handhelds
PSP | PPSSPP | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android
PSVita | Vita3K | Windows/Linux/Mac
Sega Consoles
Sega Master System | Ares | Windows/Linux/Mac
Genesis | Ares | Windows/Linux/Mac
Saturn | Mednafen | Windows/Linux
Dreamcast | Flycast | Windows/Linux/Mac/Android
Microsoft Consoles
Xbox | Xemu | Windows/Linux/Mac
Xbox 360 | Xenia | Windows
[Graphics Packs]
A lot of emulators have texture replacement capabilities built into them. What this means is that users can manually and/or AI upscale textures from the game into higher resolution or outright replace them with other textures. There aren't currently (that I'm aware of) area that have consolidated links to these things, so you'll unfortunately have to search individual project forums and look for texture or graphic packs links.
Some known graphics packs repositories:
[Graphics API Translation Layers]
Sometimes there are scenarios where a game may only use DirectX to draw it's rendered graphics to screen and we may not want this. This could be for performance reasons (maybe the Vulkan graphics api has better performance, maybe DirectX isn't available on our OS, or maybe the DirectX version is really old and not properly supported by our OS/GPU/Driver combination). In these instances we can use translations layers to translate DirectX graphics api calls into Vulkan calls using utilities like DXVK . Explaining which files to copy over depends on a per-DirectX version basis, so you'll have to use a combination of the PCGamingWiki and DXVK documentation to figure out which files to replace.
[Graphics Post-Processing]
With a utility called ReShade we're able to inject various post-processing effects into the final stage of the graphic rendering pipelines of games. This allows you to adjust color curves, inject path-traced global illumination (a method like ray-tracing), and add a bunch of other effects to DirectX9/11/12/Vulkan games.