Our week continues, fellow bargain hunters, with an average Wednesday of nowhere near average savings. Top of my list includes that Borderlands Pandora Collection—because we all may as well blast through the entire franchise as prep for Borderlands 4. I'm also all about that PSDiscount on No Man's Sky, the game that just keeps on giving. Stupid amounts of value for money there. Get amongst it already.
In retro news, I’m celebrating the 15th birthday of Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again, one of the best DSi downloads you could nab. Minis March Again bolstered the original article with four more game worlds of 10 stages apiece. Along with the brilliant DIY level creator that let me wirelessly share my conundrums with friends, this was just more of the same—old school Nintendo game design with pitch perfect puzzle platforming and high sheen visuals. Please remake more of this sizeable series on Switch, Ninty.
This Day in Gaming
- Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again! (DSi) 2009. Similar
- Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare (PS3/4) 2014. Get
Welcome to another week of hot deals to keep you warm, indoors, and still rich enough for pizza. Things to note for today include Amazon getting competitive with the preorder price of Assassin's Creed Shadows. I'm also all about hooking up you PC folk with free (with Prime) versions of Dragon Age: Inquisition and The Forgotten City, two titles worthy of any respectable pile o' shame.
In retro news, I'm celebrating the 14th birthday of ModNation Racers, United Front Games' under-loved kart racer classic. I still have very fond memories of sampling the custom tracks built in it by Mr Luke Reilly, as we were both working on the Official PlayStation Magazine at the time. Being the mild bogan that he is, Reilly produced a 1:1 "Baff-erst" with all the eerie meticulousness of Richard Dreyfuss carving a perfect mashed potatoes mountain in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Oh, how we smashed that track in 4P split-screen.
Welcome to yet another week of paying a little for a lot. The Microsoft and PlayStation stores are starting to warm up with a bunch of decent sales events—the pick of which are represented below. I'm also keeping an eye on Amazon for any sign of extraordinarily early EOFY deals as well. Not much doing there. But I'll be ready to holler if and when they appear.
In retro news, I'm celebrating the 32nd birthday of Street Fighter II: Champion Edition, a game whose industry impact cannot be overstated. Obviously, 1991's World Warrior was the opening jab, but the Champion Edition revision was a $2.3 billion knockout cross that put Capcom in the top three highest grossing arcade games of all time list. Nineties gaming gromets like myself queued outside of arcades for the $1 privilege to play this, thanks to its mirror match permissiveness, playable bosses, balance tweaks, and more unique takes on Ryu and Ken.
This Day in Gaming
Aussie birthdays for notable games.
- Street Fighter II: Champion Ed. (ARC) 1992. Remaster
Thank your own personal deity—possibly C-3PO as worshipped by Ewoks—it's Friday! Obviously, the two biggest headliners are those freebies—LEGO Star Wars III and Tomb Raider [2013]. Whip up a free (and easily ditched) Amazon Prime Gaming subscription to have and to hold them forever in your GOG library. I recently replayed Lara's reboot as part of the ongoing gaming education of my eldest. Still stands up as a well-Crofted action adventure.
In retro news, I'm honouring the 17th birthday of God of War II, a phenomenal sequel to a surprise hit. My fondest memories of this vast improvement are of increased setpiece scale, surprising Panzer Dragoon-esque Pegasus rides, a steamy Rhodes Bathhouse, and the highly ridiculous unlockable fish costume called Cod of War. Truly, a top three jewel in the crown for the best-selling console of all time.
May is here and it may well be time to fill it with nothing but the best streaming content available in Australia. Don't get me wrong—I get that some folks like to menu-hunt through the six major services. Sifting through seventeen pages of the same old thumbnails to find a gem can be a rewarding thing. But me? I like to zip right to the gold.
If you’re the same, let’s hook you up with every single critically acclaimed film, addictive TV series, and surprisingly awesome original content available. Below are the top picks from thousands of hours of content from Australia's six major streaming networks. Click your provider from the list, home in on the must-sees, and set your eyes to square.
TV litter pick:Frozen Planet II: S2 – May 21 : This six-part series – narrated by the delightful Sir David Attenborough – explores the wildlife found in the world's coldest regions, like the Arctic and Antarctic.
Movie litter pick:Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning – May 22 : Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and the IMF team must track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity if it falls into the wrong hands.
TV litter pick:Mortal Kombat Legends: Cage Match – May 1 : In 1980s Hollywood, action star Johnny Cage (Joel McHale) is looking to become an A-list actor but finds himself thrust into a world filled with shadows, danger and performative execution maneuvers.
Movie litter pick:Five Nights at Freddy's – May 31 : A troubled security guard begins working at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. While spending his first night on the job, he realizes the late shift won’t be so easy to make it through…
TV litter pick:Star Wars: Tales of the Empire – May 4 : This six-parter anthology series is the “other side of the morality coin” to 2022’s immensely popular Tales of the Jedi spin-off. .
Movie litter pick:The Making of X-Men '97 – May 22 : Exactly what it says on the can. This is a deep dive on what went into the (surprisingly excellent) revitalisation of a seminal morning cartoon series.
TV litter pick:Acapulco: S3 – May 1 : In 1984, Maximo Gallardo's dream comes true when he gets the job of a lifetime at Acapulco's hottest resort, Las Colinas. But he soon realizes that working there will be quite a bit more complicated.
Movie litter pick:Dark Matter – May 8 : Based on Blake Crouch's international bestseller. Jason Dessen is abducted into an alternate version of his life. To get back to his true family, he must outwit the ultimate foe: himself.
TV litter pick:Clarkson’s Farm – May 3 : Follow Jeremy Clarkson’s often hilarious attempts to run a farm in the countryside with no previous farming experience.
Movie litter pick:Edge of Tomorrow – May 14: Possibly the most “non-gaming but still a game” movie ever written. A noobish Tom Cruise must take on a Dark Souls level alien invasion using his newfound power of next-to-limitless respawns.
TV litter pick:Little Bird: S1 – May 15 : Removed from her home on the Long Pine Reserve in Saskatchewan, Bezhig. Little Bird is adopted into a Montreal Jewish family at the age of five, becoming Esther Rosenblum.
Movie litter pick:Hidden Figures – May 5 : The incredible and untold true story of Katherine Johnson and Dorothy Vaughan—brilliant NASA employees who were integral cogs in one of the greatest space missions in history.
We're well past the midpoint of the week and are now hurtling towards some very important things. Obviously, there's the weekend to consider, but we're also in the vicinity of FFVII Rebirth's review embargo lift. My advice: peruse the amazing deals below, lock in some purchases for Saturday, and then go offline until the 29th. It's gonna be spoiler city soon.
In retro news, we're celebrating the big quarter century of Metal Gear Solid. A massive personal favourite of mine, it helped popularise the stealth genre, blew minds with its cinema-inspired style, and was bristling with emergent gameplay opportunities. [Back of the CD] case in point: I was working in games retail when it launched and can vividly recall a tsunami of returning customers who couldn't figure out how to get Meryl's codec number. Good times.
Not to start with a massive spoiler for Act 2 of life, but middle age has few upsides before the nosedive into elderliness begins in earnest. I always figured the greatest perk would be more disposable income to buy sicker toys and gadgets, however, there’s no time to enjoy any of it. That being the case, I’ve modified this supposed mid-life bonus into something I've dubbed Connoisseur Gaming Inception—the pure satisfaction of slyly introducing a younger family member to an unknown gaming genre, just to see if you can watch a new passion take flight.
I’m being quite literal with today’s example. Recently, my eldest glanced up from his usual nine-hour Geometry Dash binge to mention Star Wars Squadrons was in his price range (i.e., $2.49). His request triggered memories of a similar childhood request I made involving an approaching birthday, the X-Wing Collector’s Edition, and a joystick.
Long story short, I decided it was high time to help him reach for the skies (and his very first foray into flight sims).
In order to give him his wings properly (X ones, Y ones, the variable-sweeps of a Tomcat, or otherwise), I knew an update to my HOTAS setup would be essential. It’s been a minute, folks. I joined the Rebel Alliance in ‘98 with a Microsoft Sidewinder Precision 2 joystick, and that was the gateway into an on-again-off-again love affair with the genre—intense summer flings with Jane's Fighters Anthology, MS Flight Simulators, etc. Obviously, my HOTAS setup became a revolving door of better model updates, too, until I broke formation to redistribute my money into steering wheels and VR headsets instead.
Banking back to the topic of Connoisseur Gaming Inception, though, I do have a pro tip that will raise your percentage chance of success. You should always try to sidecar the new thing being introduced with something your victim has a preexisting love for, no matter how tangential it may seem. The link I went with was tenuous and mixed-media, but still potent. Having recently watched the crowd-pleasingly excellent Top Gun: Maverick on Netflix with my eldest son, I tried to target-lock him onto flight sims with the following gear…
The setup
Even if you’re not an up-to-date stick jockey, the aforementioned HOTAS Warthog probably needs very little introduction, so I’ll not spend too much time on it. Widely respected as a rock solid stalwart of the sim scene since 2010, this metal-tastic A-10C replica is bristling with 19 action buttons and an 8-way POV hat. The finer reasons on why it confidently owns pole position in our Best PC Joystick 2024 list will take up more space than I have to give (and it’s best explained by said article).
In the interest of covering new ground, I’ll focus more on the exceptional build and control possibilities of the Viper TQS Mission Pack, a 1:1 replica that looks to the untrained eye like it got parted right out of a real F-16. This was perfect for my needs because while many hours of X-winging in Squadrons planted the seed of interest nicely, phase two of inception was to bring my son back down to Earth for some Maverick-esque canyon running in Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Yep, it was time to employ this Throttle Quadrant System for what it was originally designed for—real-life military aviating. And hey, I’m not ashamed to say that I hogged the above kit for a couple of runs myself, followed by some reacquainting with more hardcore fare like Falcon BMS and DCS.
A 1:1 replica that looks like it got parted right out of a real F-16.
During those expert-level engagements, I was mighty impressed with the build quality and authenticity of the Viper TQS. Just like the feeling of playing my racers with a Logitech Pro Wheel or my light gun games with a solenoid-fitted Sinden Light Gun, one really can't beat the elevated experience of gaming with a dedicated peripheral that’s been lovingly designed and built for purpose.
With the specialised throttle experience provided by the Viper TQS, it’s pretty intoxicating to have this big, weighty thing that puts a huge array of control inputs and exes at your fingertips. Yes, some of the parts are plastic in a few spots, but the overwhelming bulk of it is brushed aluminium base meets a solid diecast metal throttle lever. There’s also the incredibly cool, V.A.T.S.-esque backlit panel with adjustable indicator lights on the landing gear controls and TWA info.
Better yet, the Viper’s complex outer appearance belies its simplistic connectivity and ease of use. You can hook it up easily with a USB-C to USB cable, and, though the experts among you will feel compelled to use a clamp or the provided drill holes to bond it to something permanently, I found I could use it as-is on a desk just fine.
You can't beat the elevated experience of gaming with a dedicated peripheral that’s been lovingly designed and built.
When it comes to compatibility on a software level, the news isn’t as positive. On the plus side, you can hook this into DCS and have 95% of the inputs be accurately recognised and ready to go in an instant. On the other side of the coin: if you are coming at this with a mind to use it with the UGC F-16s in the latest Microsoft Flight Simulator, there’s a lack of native mapping, which will trigger a lengthy remap process.
I’m not going to spend all day going through the generally excellent toggles and switches on this unit, but there are some peccadilloes worth mentioning. On the mission pack base, you’re getting four solidly produced three-way toggles and three two-way ones. In terms of dials, there is a depressable coder rotary, and a four-way, five-way, and six-way rotary that feel a little too stiff to turn.
Lastly, we have a vertical axis and a lockable two-position gear handle, the latter of which could be the only potentially damageable component on this thing. I constantly feel like I have to use kid gloves around it.
While flicking levers like a 1950s telephone switchboard operator can be weirdly satisfying, what about the feel of what is arguably the main event here, the throttle? It’s wonderful and weighty to handle, plus it’s running off Hall Effect sensor magnet tech which provides superior position accurate data and is less prone to degradation without moving parts.
Speaking of friction, I dig that you can tailor the movement feel of the throttle, afterburner detent, and idle detent with a neatly hidden hex key adjuster. I would also be remiss if I didn’t give special mention to how satisfying it is to backfist the Chaff / Flare button on this unit. It feels both responsive and capable of handling the desperate abuse it’s sure to suffer during many a dogfight.
When it comes to said combat—actually turning and burning with this thing—the Warthog stick and Viper TQS combo really do go a long way to selling the aviator sim to your brain as a real-life experience. Obviously, with my young recruit I had to patiently scaffold him up to such things, from joyflights in MS Flight Sim to Squadrons to actual life and death-dealing in War Thunder. From there, and hopefully in time, he'll seek to engage with the deeper combat sims that await him elsewhere on my SSD.
To that end, I borrow the reins and show him what's in his future by firing up Falcon BMS for a few sorties. With a few practical lessons I explain just how deep this "study sim" is and how highly maneuverable the F-16 can be as a supersonic, multirole fighter. Needless to say, the Viper TQS performs brilliantly here as I throttle to Mach 2 and demonstrate the 9-g maneuvers for which this bad boy was purpose-built. Pretty soon, he's right in the moment with me, cheering as I leverage our T/W ratio and energy retention in the vertical to pull repeated Immelmannesque turns, and then (applying the F16's superior roll rate) we slide into our target's turning circle for some sweet, sweet killshots.
End result: Mission accomplished—my son's all in and keen to sim. And as a side bonus, the demonstration process has rekindled this old Ace's interest, too. If you yourself have half a mind to dust off your long disused G-suit or expand your horizons for a first try of this genre, it always pays to not engage with the low-tier gear and instead get good tone on the (admittedly not inexpensive) best-in-class hardware out there.
The only downside I can see with today’s exercise is pretty soon I’ll have a wannabe wingman instead of a hands-off RIO in my house, and that’ll mean sharing this hardware. I probably should have seen that bogie on my radar beforehand. Which makes me less a Maverick in my own mind and more of a short-sighted, absolute Goose.
Adam Mathew wrote these words because he felt the need. The need...for speed. *Rowdy high-five*
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