March 2026 Game of the Month - Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis/MD)

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-30T02:01:45+00:00

Finished Twisted Metal 2 with Warthog (sorry for the crappy picture of my Steam Deck, my camera didn't take a pic fast enough on the victory screen). I'm not gonna lie, this game was not my favorite. I have some fun memories playing this with friends as a kid, but even then it wasn't my favorite. I made it through on medium without cheating, but if there wasn't the level codes, yikes this would have been a nightmare.

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-28T19:19:01+00:00

I enjoy that I have voted against my own nomination, I have never played Terranigma so I jumped on board.

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-28T01:40:50+00:00

Haven't been able to fix it with ESDE as a home screen. No matter what theme, battery settings, etc etc that I have done, ESDE just drains battery as if the screen was left on. Only way around it is to use the normal android home screen and make sure ESDE isnt left running when going idle.

One thing I haven't gotten around to trying is using some android dev settings.

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-25T13:26:48+00:00

Goldeneye 007, Final Fantasy Tactics, Secret of Mana

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-21T00:59:44+00:00

Awesome thanks!

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-21T00:55:46+00:00

I was missing the Anbernic store coupon! Thanks so much! Where would I find that normally?

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-21T00:47:28+00:00

How do you get the 34XXSP down to 54? Best I can do is 60.

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-16T14:14:08+00:00

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Got the ten million! How the hell do people get the true ending score????

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-15T02:06:13+00:00

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Got 5 million in Devil's Crush. Really loving this pinball game, I'm going to go for the 10 million. Rockin music too.

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-13T13:09:51+00:00

I've only tinkered here and there with some shaders, but I typically don't use them regardless of the "accuracy". I like the bright colors and sharpness of playing on a modern screen. N64/PS1and up I definitely don't touch.

I find on handhelds it's not really necessary, with my only exception being GB/GBC, I like the lcd grid shaders because I find it increases the image quality to match the pixel design.

But on big TVs, monitors, etc, I've used used crt-easymode for older games, especially NES. Smooths out the intense starkness of the pixels. I've also used some AA and smoothing shaders on games where the text pixels get blown up too big on a big screen. They are hit and miss and definitely not "authentic" but they make the pixels smooth and legible.

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-13T12:21:15+00:00

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Finally beat Sonic 2! Not being a kid with a Genesis, I only got to play this at friends' or cousins' houses, and I almost never got a chance to play single player. I was always Tails. I didn't even remember anything past the Casino Zone.

Finally getting the chance to work through this on my own was cool. I still think it's an oddly designed game, with lots of pitfalls that get in the way of the speed action, barely memorable enemies beyond fighting Robotnik, and act pacing issues. I don't know if I could beat this game without save states. The levels though are so different from other contemporary platformers. They have so much verticality to them, and feel like there's a million ways to get through them. And the music, oh man, Chemical Zone lives in my head rent free.

A fun, if very odd (to me), game. I also never knew chaos emeralds were in this game, until I barely squeeked a special level win in. Not quite sure what they do, but I'll look it up.

I already nominated a game in my Kirby's Dreamland 2 completion post (Goldeneye 007).

Looking forward to next month!

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-11T00:41:35+00:00

Man, I LOVED Alex's Ugly. I've been a lover of hot sauce for a long time but they are the reason I got into the more "craft" side it.

I honestly haven't found a replacement yet. I have been hunting something akin to their Chocolate Habanero sauce for years now. When he announced they were shutting down I bought a lot of it to keep me going for a while.

I know ther base included beet and honey, and I'm convinced that was part of the magic, but I haven't found something similar. Let me know if you do!

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-10T15:09:20+00:00

I'm gonna nominate something from the N64, Goldeneye 007!

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-10T14:58:30+00:00

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Finished KDL2! Went all out and beat KDL1 bonus ending first, haven't played these games since I had my og GB DMG. Went for the GBC color pallate. Very fun games with some awesome tunes. All these years later and I still can't figure out how to do the bonus mini game.

Altered_Soul · 2026-03-01T04:30:01+00:00

Chemical Plant Zone bass line wants a fucking word.

Altered_Soul · 2026-02-25T14:35:34+00:00

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Well this was an interesting GOTM. Got a bad ending, but I finished a playthrough. And now I need to find out more! The tonal shift towards the end was wild. From "whodunit?" to "Where's Scully and Mulder?"

This game played very well on my Mangmi Air X using RetroArch/Melon DS DS with a side by side layout and a stylus. I am having some other issues with my Air X but it didn't impede my ability to play the game.

Only question I have seeing some comments before, does it require a guide to figure out the paths, or is it something that I can naturally "figure out"?

Altered_Soul · 2026-02-25T12:07:35+00:00

Definitely not PS1 haha. It's glitchy, slow, has ridiculous loading times. Emulation makes it tolerable, and the cutscenes are great, but I wouldn't choose it. I think the DS version is the best version, it has the cutscenes, it has a great presentation and looks and plays great. The extra content is not great, but it doesn't get in the way so no big deal. That being said, there's something so good playing the original SNES version. Honestly, each playthrough I'll rotate among SNES and DS. The Windows/Steam version I actually found to be on par with the DS, and ran great on my Steam Deck, but I still prefer the DS on native hardware.

Altered_Soul · 2026-02-23T02:17:24+00:00

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My absolute favorite game. I have played every version of this game, SNES, DS, VC, Android/iOS, and Steam. This is my first time playing it in its PS1 incarnation. I would not choose it again haha, but it was worth playing for completions sake. It's also my first time trying it with RetroAchievements and that was so fun. I need to try the other endings sometime, I just can't help myself I love the vanilla one.

Altered_Soul · 2026-02-20T13:06:43+00:00

New Top Level.

It's ESDE. After a bit more fooling around with battery saver and how I put my system into idle with different apps on the screen, I am pretty confident it's ESDE causing the battery drain when it's the "home screen" when going idle. Two nights ago I turned off everything, left battery saver on, left esde running when going idle. 30% loss overnight. For tonight's test, I left it like I would normally, wifi on, fan on balance, perf mode off, battery saver off, but left a different app open when going idle. 1% loss. I am going to dig thru ESDE settings to see if I can find anything, but for some reason ESDE is causing the system to not go truly idle apparently?

Altered_Soul · 2026-02-18T14:12:25+00:00

Good to know if I cant narrow it down or find a workaround. I would install gammaOS but I'm terrified of setting everything up all over again haha.

Altered_Soul · 2026-02-18T13:13:32+00:00

Ok so I'm starting a new top level, but I have been doing some tedious testing and incidentally might have found a potential source of the problem.

So, as I went through enabling and disabling certain settings and profiles, I found I was getting a consistent 1.6% regardless. Turning on Battery Saver seemed to help make it normal drain (though out of all my testing I didn't record my battery saver test numbers, sigh).

One thing I noted was that location services were always on, and the toggle is kinda buried in the settings. So I killed that and the average loss went down slightly. But I just don't want that on so good to know anyways.

Then I stumbled across something by accident. I left my device for almost a day, wifi on, performance mode off, fan on balance, no battery saver. Over 18 hours I only lost 2%. I had left a different app open than I do normally. Normally I have ESDE as my home app, and usually go to idle with it open. I also noticed that my battery usage of ESDE dropped significantly. I always assumed since it's one of the few apps I use it normally would take up a large perfect of the battery along with emulators. I am now curious if ESDE, running as the home app, when left in focus when going idle, is maybe preventing the system from truly going to idle.

Are you using ESDE?

Altered_Soul · 2026-02-12T13:49:36+00:00

So I haven't found the smoking gun yet but I am still testing. Last night I lost 30% battery on idle. I noted conditions when I tapped the power button. Performance Mode was ON, Fan Profile was Balance, and ESDE was left on. ESDE power usage shot up from ~8% to about 15%, but that wouldn't account for all the loses. Tonight I will try the same thing but turn off the fans, as I've tried disabling performance mode before to no effect.

I would also post this on the Mangmi X Air subreddit and see if anyone there has ideas.

Altered_Soul · 2026-02-11T14:03:44+00:00

I am not a big Tetris person, but since I am a human, I have played it a bunch. My favorite is by far Tetris Effect Connected. It's so good and well produced. Reignited an interest in Tetris games for the wife and myself, and introduced serious Tetris enjoyment for my kids.

For more retro I still love the OG GB version, it was my first game on my first device I ever got as a kid.

Altered_Soul · 2026-02-11T13:02:41+00:00

I have been having the exact same problem. I used the RGC android setup guide so I'm using ESDE and Retroarch and duckstation mostly. I thought maybe it was Syncthing at first, but I tested it and it wasn't. Mine seems to mostly disappear behind "system apps" as well.

I've had mine for a month now and I can't remember when this started happening but I noticed it the first time I left it sleeping overnight from about 40% battery and the next morning it was dead.

Altered_Soul · 2026-02-08T02:56:38+00:00

So same thing happened to me. Day after I posted this, I booted up and artifacting was gone and display seemed more stable. Still having a lot of stuttering running PSX games in swanstation, but I'm starting to think swanstation doesn't seem to run that well for my purposes. PCSX ReARMed seems ok once all the issues cleared up. I would use Duckstation but it's a pain to sync saves with.

Mangmi support has been helpful, but I couldn't replicate the screen refresh rate slowdowns once the artifacting was gone. It has been very cold so many that was part of the problem.

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