[What free games are worth it?]

Khimera: Destroy All Monster Girls is a fun game if you enjoy games similar to Shantae or Shovel Knight with a bit of Kirby or Mega Man thrown into the mix.

• Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/467380/Khimera_Destroy_All_Monster_Girls/

• Itch: https://suits-sandals.itch.io/khimera-destroy-all-monster-girls

Chester Classic is a game I had previous experience on Xbox 360 when it was on their Xbox LIVE Indie Games section, it's like a mash-up and tribute to odd action side-scrollers like Earthworm Jim with various "Chesters" you can play as parodying various classic video games. This particular version was an enhanced version of the XBLIG version but it was recently re-released as freeware on PC some time ago as the developer is working on a new Unity remake under the name of Chester One.

• Chester Classic (along with a port of the original and soon alphas/betas): https://bennfried.itch.io/chester-classic

Tyrian 2000 is definitely a classic shoot 'em up with lots of weapons and modes to play around with, and the story mode is really cool. GOG has the 2000 version pre-packaged with DOSBox in an easy-to-play package, though there's the OpenTyrian port too though I don't see much development for that port and it's based on the older versions of Tyrian.

• Tyrian 2000 on GOG: https://www.gog.com/game/tyrian_2000

• OpenTyrian: https://bitbucket.org/opentyrian/opentyrian/wiki/Home

[Mega Man X: Japanese version]

This particular release of Rockman X for Windows is something I've been curious about for a long time since seeing images of the box itself but alas I never could find a way to play it to see if it's a native PC port or a re-release of the shoddy DOS version.

[Tron: Evolution SecuROM DRM expiration makes game unplayable 9 years after release]

Reasons why DRM needs to be abolished.

[Grand Theft Auto V offline mode disabled by new Rockstar launcher]

Yeah but it's still sad that Rockstar are never going get over themselves for what happened with the "Hot Coffee" incident if they're spending this much effort to try and stop modders from even modding their games.

[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas free on Rockstar Games Launcher]

Vadim M has confirmed this is similar to the Steam version except for:

• Uses Rockstar's own DRM
• Has even worse Widescreen support (the game looks more distorted in widescreen it seems)
• Apparently has even less music than the mobile and current Steam version

Forgot to mention the downgrade tool doesn't work on the RGL version of San Andreas sadly. Hopefully the folks at GTA Forums can update the tool to fix this issue and the outdated mods it came with that gave me problems with the game after the downgrade.

Sources:

• https://twitter.com/NationalPepper/status/1173998430080962568
• https://twitter.com/NationalPepper/status/1174002885539061762

Edit: These error findings were corrected by Silent.

[Retroarch emulation software coming to Steam on July 30th]

I hope for the best for this too, though I wouldn't be surprised if pirates that are already abusing the Steam Workshop for the Sega Genesis Hub emulator that Sega released and take advantage of the tools for uploading ROM hacks (a.k.a. the "mods" of games available on Steam) to the Workshop as a means to pirate even more ROMs/Warez (including games that aren't on the Sega Genesis) that may or may not be legally available already through Steam.

[tinyBuild CEO attributes anti-piracy DRM stance to improper representative training, announces updates for GOG versions of their titles]

Now if only Inti Creates can learn a thing or two from these guys... *cough*CotMforGOG*cough*

[Publisher tinyBuild won't patch or update GOG games "because games are continuously torrented through DRM free builds"]

First Inti Creates with how they screwed Kickstarter backers, Igarashi, and Fangamer over with how they handled giving them (myself included) the PC version of Curse of the Moon and are so adamant about pushing Steam DRM down our throats for that'd make an open letter about it when they were called out on it rather than letting backers have a GOG/DRM-free version of the game like the campaign promised, now these guys are desperate about "maintaining sales" that they'll stop supporting games they've put out on GOG... the nerve of developers these days...

[Mighty Gunvolt Burst port announced for Steam release on July 31st]

34 minutes ago, AnotherGills said:

It's possible. If you look at Blaster Master Zero on Switch and 3DS, there are four paid DLC characters (Gunvolt, Ekoro, Shantae, and Shovel Knight), each priced at $1.99 USD. The PC release of Blaster Master Zero includes Gunvolt and Ekoro, while Shantae and Shovel Knight are still paid DLC characters.

Considering Gunvolt and Ekoro were initially free for one month on the console version before being paid, that may have had something to do with their inclusion in the PC's versions base game. It's possible that Mighty Gunvolt Burst may include some of the DLC characters with the base game.

That could be a possibility for Mighty Gunvolt Burst since 3DS and Switch versions had Ekoro available on their respective demos and could be transfered to the full game (though I'm not sure if she's available for Hard mode if those only transfered her save file to the full game rather than buying her DLC outright for those versions), while the PlayStation 4 version port (a.k.a. Gal*Gunvolt Burst) had Ekoro available right from the start and had DLC packs for the other characters from their respective series (e.g. the "rivals" like Copen/Acura, RAY, and Kurona in one pack, and "supporting" characters like Call and Joule in another). Question is will this Steam version will have Ekoro available from the get-go like in the PlayStation 4 port.

[Mighty Gunvolt Burst port announced for Steam release on July 31st]

It seems like that statement might be a typo and what they're trying to say that every DLC character (e.g. RAY, Joule, Kurona) will be available for purchase upon the game's release which are about ~$2 USD a piece and there's about 6 characters from the console version (5 since the 3DS port couldn't fit Tenzou from Gal*Gun due to memory limitations according to Inti Creates).

[What's your favourite game that was panned by the critics?]

Mighty No. 9 recently has became one of mine, even moreso on PC. As much as this game has got bashed on by critics and especially the toxic hatedom it gained, I found the game fun to play. Is it amazing or ground-breaking? Not really in my opinion, but I don't need it to be. While it does have some problems I could make a list of, but for what it did for me, it kept me playing and getting better, driving me to better high scores and learn some of the nuances in its gameplay. My experience with Mighty No. 9, if anyone would believe it, started with the Wii U version, which isn't the console-bricking mess many are claiming, it was far from ideal thanks to performance issues, bugs and glitches left over (from my experience, most were harmless but a few times it crashed and hard locked the system until I rebooted it), and longer loading times (but it was nothing compared to Sonic the Hedgehog 2006). It was decent when I first played it on Wii U despite these problems, but since I've recently purchased the game again on Steam, my experience with Mighty No. 9 has been so much better. I've heard accusations of the game being badly optimized on PC, which is absolutely not true for me; I have a relatively medium-spec system running Windows 10 Home 64-bit with a Nvidia GeForce GTX 750, AMD FX-4350, and 4GB of RAM, and Mighty No. 9 is running beautifully for me. Haven't ran into any bugs, playing on max settings at 1080p, runs at a slick 60 FPS with very rare and few frames drops, almost no load times, and controls are sharp and responsive, even with V-sync enabled. All this blew my expectations of playing the game on PC and enjoying the game even more for it.