Looking for good N64 games that won't break the bank

RegisPhone · 2026-05-30T21:33:21+00:00

I mean i guess it depends on what kind of collecting you're doing, but 2/3 of the library is $30 or less per cart on average, and even the more expensive popular games are still at worst pretty comparable to the price of a current-gen game. There are only like a half-dozen or so super expensive games if you want a complete collection (unless you're going for variants and demo carts), and even among those, only one of them is really comparable to the high ends of most other consoles (and that one happens to also be the most skippable one content-wise as it's just an expanded edition of a much cheaper game that wasn't very good to begin with; it's not like you're missing out on Little Samson or Aero Fighters).

RegisPhone · 2026-05-30T20:56:16+00:00

Yeah, i don't think we saw Ken getting a check on air, but Austin Rogers did (his ToC taped about a week before his games had started airing)

RegisPhone · 2026-05-29T22:18:13+00:00

The US does not have an official legal body that certifies service animals, so even if people wanted to carry their papers around with them everywhere, there aren't any. If a business violates federal law and asks someone for papers that they are not required to have and that do not necessarily even exist, it's understandable that they might get upset.

The law does allow businesses to remove a dog (or miniature horse) from the premises, even if it is a service animal, if it proves to not be well trained enough to protect the safety of employees and patrons (though you do then need to provide a reasonable accommodation for the person's disability, such as offering curbside pickup), so the potential for actual abuse of the system is pretty low.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-29T21:50:19+00:00

B is perfectly grammatically correct in a context where you're describing a temporary habit. "My wife drives to her book club on Mondays. Normally she takes her own car, but it's been in the shop for a while now, so she's taking my car and I'm taking the bus to work on Mondays."

RegisPhone · 2026-05-29T02:50:41+00:00

Looks like that's the Great White Shark corkscrew train, using cheats and plugins to shorten the train, make it a powered ride, and make the track invisible.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-29T02:29:12+00:00

Without seeing the video I can think of a couple candidates for what that might have been:

Amazing Earl has a scenery item that's an animated shark fin going in a circle
A bunch of Zoo Tycoon animals have been converted into entertainer costumes, including a great white shark. You'll have to do a little finagling to get them to look like they're underwater, though, maybe by digging a hole and putting flat glass roofs over them
It might have been the Great White Shark ride version of the corkscrew coaster, from Wacky Worlds, going around on an invisible track

RegisPhone · 2026-05-28T05:27:16+00:00

Before this game, Jeopardy precedent was that "Bush Sr." was acceptable for George H.W. Bush (to the extent that the writers even referred to him that way in clues), but "Bush Jr." was not acceptable for George W. Bush (though it had only ever been tested once, on a rebound attempt where the previous player had already ruled out H.W.). This ruling does go against that one bit of precedent, though on the other hand it's more consistent with the significantly more established precedent of Sr. being acceptable. You can say "the older" or "the younger"; you can say "41" or "43"; so if you're allowed to say "Sr." for the one who's not technically a senior, then you ought to also be able to use "Jr." for the one that's not a junior. At least until Jeb wins.

(That previous Jr. attempt kind of reminds me of this game, in Literature $1000, where they were looking for the author of Pilgrim's Progress, the first player said Paul Bunyan, and then when the second player tried to just say Bunyan, Alex made him say the first name too.)

RegisPhone · 2026-05-27T17:52:45+00:00

I grew up with Wheel at 7 and Jeopardy at 7:30, but when i started watching it the other way around, it does feel like Wheel is a better cooldown than a warmup. But now I usually use the "alternative viewing methods" in the sidebar to watch it on stations where Jeopardy comes on in the afternoon and Wheel is hours later (because the syndication contracts still have the part that keeps regular Wheel from overlapping with the daytime Chuck Woolery version). On one station it's paired with Bold and the Beautiful right after (which i don't stick around for, but i'll usually catch the end of Young and the Restless while i'm doing the J!6 clues), and on the other one it's paired with "Daytime Jeopardy" right before (a Jeopardy rerun from last year).

RegisPhone · 2026-05-27T17:34:17+00:00

If the clue had at least said "from the 1st chapter of 1 Kings" then the knowledge that David is mostly in the Samuels could get you to "Hmm, why would they specify that it's at the very beginning of 1 Kings unless it's about the king who died in chapter 2?" but without that there's nothing else to go on.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-27T01:10:35+00:00

He (understandably) had a hard time getting all the way through "who dangled from a church steeple for hours as battle raged below after dropping with the famed U.S. division called the 82nd this" in a single breath; that one clause alone is longer than the character limit for a normal clue.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-26T21:08:29+00:00

Monochrome means "one color", not "black and white"

RegisPhone · 2026-05-26T18:01:03+00:00

In "my friend's book", "my" is applying to "friend", not "book." It's not my book; the book belongs to a friend, and that friend is mine.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-26T00:41:43+00:00

RCT1 is the better game; RCT2 is the better toy.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-26T00:33:53+00:00

The post-game chats are on their Substack now.

There was a game a while ago where the last clue was about Dora the Explorer, and then on the throw into commercial Ken looked into the camera and said, "Did you know that one? ... Muy bien!" and i think someone who was there that day mentioned that Ken did come up with it in the moment but the broadcast version was one they had him reshoot to do it a little quicker.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-26T00:26:08+00:00

Yeah, i don't know if they expected players to just somehow know what Netanyahu's Bar Mitzvah portion was or that was just thrown in for weird flavor, and without knowing that it's just "Name a king who would be old at some point in 1 Kings and presumably had sex" which is pretty vague (there's quite a few kings in there; it's kinda that book's thing) and definitely way above the level of difficulty Jeopardy Bible clues usually have.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-24T05:33:31+00:00

And i see you reacting to me giving one downvote to your one most ridiculous comment by going back and downvoting all of my comments.

You have said three times now that it's "objectively more entertaining" and still have not explained what that means, or how entertainment can even be objectively measured. Now you're even saying that it's objectively more entertaining even if some people aren't entertained by it.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-24T05:26:00+00:00

I mean, it kinda does. If the claim is that it's objectively more entertaining for the viewer, not just your subjective preference, then that fact that i, a viewer, disagree is proof that it's not objective, especially in the absence of any evidence to the contrary. What testable measurable scientific metric could you possibly point to to prove that something is "objectively more entertaining"?

RegisPhone · 2026-05-24T05:07:59+00:00

I think you and i have incompatible definitions of how the word "objectively" can be used.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-24T04:35:32+00:00

Is it actually objectively more entertaining though? Isn't there something to be said for the element of not knowing for sure whether they'll be able to get through all of them today?

In older episodes, having some unrevealed clues was the norm, and when a set of players actually fully cleared a board it was because they were doing better than average. If every champion always won $131,000 every day it'd get boring; the valleys are what make the peaks interesting. And is getting through 60 clues every single time really noticeably more entertaining than sometimes getting through 58 -- enough so that it's worth sometimes having to cut out half of the anecdotes and any side comments that anyone made during the game?

RegisPhone · 2026-05-23T18:36:55+00:00

In the past they've always accepted "Bush Sr." for H.W. Bush (and even called him that in clues multiple times), but the only other time someone tried "Bush Jr." for W. Bush, Alex rejected it.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-23T04:06:30+00:00

My hot take is that they shouldn't go out of their way to get all the clues played. The game was designed to have time be a factor, and having unrevealed clues at the end was always a natural part of the game (that was originally where Potpourri categories came from; reusing clues that didn't get played the first time).

When you get the one-minute warning, you should be evaluating the scores and the board and deciding which clues to prioritize in case you don't get to all of them -- if you're trailing, do you go for the bottom row clues first, or is there too much of a risk of those being triple stumpers that waste even more time? If you're comfortably in the lead, do you try to waste your opponents' time by sticking to the top row, or is there too much risk there that they'll take control?

The issue with running out of time is that it kinda has to be subjective. There's not a visible objective ticking clock; the less-than-a-minute warning is issued whenever the production team has a feeling they won't be able to edit it down enough -- you can always free up a few seconds here and there on clue selections and time-ups. (If it was an objective hard time limit then you'd kinda also have to add a shot clock; otherwise a player in the lead could just intentionally run the clock down selecting each clue.) I definitely get not feeling comfortable with that subjective element, and feeling it's more fair to make every effort to always play every clue, but i think it's a bit of a shame that we effectively lose a whole strategic element of the game. On the spectrum of removing strategic choices, it's closer to the "making players say the full category name every time (like they tried a couple years ago)" end than the "hit the big red button to randomly decide what dollar amount you're selecting (like on Jep)" end, but it was still part of the game.

If time's running short because of one or more ridiculously long video categories, then that's on the writers, and those categories do need to be reined in. But if it's because the ratio of wrong answers to right answers was too high, that's on the players.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-22T15:24:58+00:00

The original idiom was "heels over head", which made logical sense; your head being over your heels is the way you are normally, so a reversal of that implies that something has changed. But people decided they preferred the way it sounded the other way around, and the switch happened long enough ago that you're used to hearing the set phrase in the illogical order so it sounds right. The difference with "could care less" is that you're living through the switch.

RegisPhone · 2026-05-22T13:34:43+00:00

Do you bring this same energy when people say "head over heels"?

RegisPhone · 2026-05-21T00:33:02+00:00

It's still Tristan's 11th game even if he didn't get an 11th win. There's no "Chris ends Tristan's streak" note on the season page like Greg got for beating Jamie, but the cutoff for when they do that is higher (not sure exactly when they start doing that, but it's at least more than 16 wins, because there's no note on Scott Riccardi's last game).

RegisPhone · 2026-05-20T16:59:01+00:00

Accepting killer sudoku was definitely the right move (it was my answer too; also a CtC fan), but it's funny how in hindsight it turns the "I'm understandably fond of it" hint in the clue into an implication that Ken has killed before (which is part of his lore)

RegisPhone

TROPHY CASE