What are you playing right now?

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Browser games during surfing:
Torn
Agar.io
(next)slither.io
Pawn shop simulator (FB)

steam games:
Town of Salem
(next) Tabletop Simulator
Fallout 4

Lately I've been playing Enter the Gungeon, Rogue Galaxy and Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare.

I've grown relatively bored of Skylines due to the lack of economic and city services having an impact on the city.

At least in all the Simcities, if you didn't provide enough education at all the levels it would create economic and crime problems until it was resolved.

The economies in Simcities made sense and acted like what you'd expect.
In Skylines the economy is like not all important or effects your city unless it is in a depression.

City Skylines needs greatly overhaul the simulation and economy.

it's a shame to hear when software and hardware don't march along there does exist a compatibility mode but if my neverhood experiences are anything to go by, it is useless.

is it compatible with DOSbox?

I swear that "compatibility mode" option never does ANYTHING.

Or at least it never did in all of my times trying it on things.

It's funny you mention that, because it was originally developed for DOS, but it was ported to Windows at the last minute, which might explain some of its compatibility issues. DosBox wouldn't be able to run it directly, though theoretically you could run Windows 95 in DosBox, and use that to run Shandalar. Problem is, DosBox was never really designed to have different operating systems running inside of it, so Windows 95/98 are glitchy at best, and extremely unstable at worst.

Meanwhile, Shandalar is playable enough in a Windows XP Virtualbox, but running Virtualbox on Linux introduces annoying sound glitches on top of the speed issues that are already present. Ironically, I stopped using Windows 7 as my main operating system in favor of Linux because I was having sound driver issues that would introduce random glitches. I also grew to really like Manjaro's package management system.

For running stubborn Windows 95 games I'd almost say that PCem is one of the best options out there, since it emulates an entire PC down to the chipset. Unfortunately, it is also an incredible pain to set up, and it requires a crap ton of CPU power. It's one of the main things that has made me regret building an AMD rig instead of doing my homework and putting together something from used Intel parts for around the same price.

DOSBox doesn't run Windows 95 or 98 very well.
Virtual PC 2007 runs Win98 well, but you'll need to use the 2004 version or files from it if you want the extra features in Win95.

I didn't completely invest myself into that game yet, but after the first dungeon I already came to the conclusion:
That game is hard. Nintendo hard!
Not exactly a bad thing, I like challenge. It really takes some time getting used to it though.

Right now I'm replaying Zelda LttP though while occasionally finishing one car after another in F-Zero X whenever I feel like it, basically doing all cups on any difficulty with any car.
I always liked the feel of LttP, I think of all Zelda games it might be the one to spot the most intense classic fairytale feeling for some reason. Right after I'll likely replay Link's Awakening once again, the original GameBoy version though, not DX. I prefer the original's perfect ending.
I blame A Link Between Worlds as it got me into the mood for replaying these Zelda titles.

As a matter of fact, I prefer the original experience compared to ports which sometimes have additions or changes done to them.

"Nioh" alpha demo... It says it's up for play until May 5th on PSN for PS4, and beating the first area is supposed to give a download for something called "Mark of the Conqueror" when the actual game comes out. I don't know how it'd work as there's nothing marked in my download list after hitting the button to claim the content, but I'm not sure I care.

The game seems alright, and doesn't feel nearly so much like a Souls game knockoff as I had the low expectations for it to. It mostly feels like a somewhat cumbersome ninja action game with strong stat-building and mild stealth elements, which is weird, because you're supposed to be samurai. The first area seemed pretty generic and mundane for atmosphere though, and the enemy placement just felt too nonsensical, and reminded me too much that I was playing a game, so I'll probably play more of the second area later(convenient that the demo saves progress) to see how I feel in possibly getting the game or not. Which, the second area appears to be an outdoor temple setting in the rain, which looked pretty amazing as much as I don't typically care about shiny graphics(I guess I noticed them there), and the enemy placement didn't seem like someone on the development team just started distributing enemies randomly over the map like in the first area.

The combat is much more involved than I expected it to be, so I've just been fighting the same group of enemies at the entrance of the second area while getting a hang of the mechanics. The swordplay against the human enemies is actually pretty satisfying, though, any more than two on one is almost guaranteed to lead to death, and the enemies hunt you down relentlessly if you try to leave, so stirring up a group is a really bad idea. I didn't really care for the oni things(whatever they're supposed to be) that were thrown in throughout the first area(and certain to be in the second I'm sure) though, as they seem programmed to be dumber than soup and don't have the capacity to use ladders, so are exceptionally easy to get a drop on using the environment... I'd really hope they make note to fix that. I should think that such big monstrous things should probably have no issue jumping up to, at very least, the top of a single story rooftop... it made confrontations with their presence rather pointless when I could just jump down to an area below, have them jump down in pursuit, and then climb a ladder back up and then casually be along on my way.

i actually had a hard time getting into ALTTP the first time through because the pacing was very slow i found, i dropped it at skull woods (or wherever the 3rd dark world dungeon is). it was a slog going from dungeon to dungeon.

later i picked it up again, finished it 100% and it did get "faster" towards the end when i got the blue tunic. my appreciation for it grew 1000x. the opening is among the strongest of all zelda titles, a literal "it was a dark and stormy night" exposition.

i also played links awakening (DX, i prefer color over pea green and shades of grey) and while it has more sentimental value, i miss the details and features that the 16 bit game had like fairies, potions, 20 hearts. it didn't drag on as much.

it was partially inspired by twin peaks! apparently!

that is not the case.

the melding of education into your game plan is essential to the character and stability of your cities.

simple example from when i first started playing the game:
in a commercial zone i made, i had many buildings that were abandoned due to lack of customers. i had many residents living close by, and i even made a bus route through the residential area going to the commercial area, but still it did not solve the problem.
i then made cycle-ways and pedestrian paths to the centre of town, but still it did not work.
i then noticed that the abandoned buildings were level 3 buildings that require wealthier customers than the ones living around them. the residents i had were not wealthy enough to afford to shop there.

they were not wealthy enough because their level of education was too low.
then i built a university, but it did not work (i already had elementary and high schools).
the reason it did not work was because i had no office block zones, and so even though the education of the citizens who went to the university was high, they had no jobs that would afford them the wealth needed to shop at the abandoned commercial buildings.
so i zoned office areas, and soon after, the level 3 buildings were revived and flourished.
______________

another example of reverse effect:

i zoned an industrial district as "forestry and logging" , and zoned an area of low density residential around it to provide it with workers.
the forestry companies started sprouting up but soon there was the "not enough workers" warning zot (icon) hovering above them. i zoned more residential and the problem remained.
then the forestry companies started to become abandoned due to insufficient workers, and when i studied a forestry company, i discovered it needed only uneducated workers, and no residents in my surrounding zone were uneducated.
i removed the elementary school (the only school in that area) and the problem decreased, but i had to eventually impose a policy on that district where people did not have to go to school (because they were traveling a long way to the other available schools in other areas (and adding to the traffic snarls incidentally)) to solve the problem.

education is intricately woven in to the very complex chains of cause and effect in the game and it is much less discernible than it was in sim city 4 (the last good sim city) where the effects of no schools produced anger and continuous citizen happiness problems and other simple short chain ramifications from the outset. sim cities 4 was a good game when it was the only one available, but skylines is vastly more integrated.
one annoying thing about skylines is the death waves and the inefficiency of hearses who travel to the other side of the city to pick up a corpse when there is a cemetery next to that corpse, and a dead person waiting to be picked up from where the hearses originated from

Xenoblade Chronicles X again.

Star Fox Guard.... It's so damn addictive Tower Defense.

Oh FYI Xenoblade launches on the VC/eShop in NA tomorrow for $19.99/$24.99 CAN.

Yep, that was the dungeon at the skull woods.
Yes, ALTTP is slow at first but it does pick up in difficulty and speed. The feel also gets gradually darker the further you get in the game.
I never found it that tiresome to walk to the dungeons though and enjoyed everything about that game, especially after absolving the tutorial dungeons so that you have gained the mirror and get to do world-travelling. It was pretty exciting from then onwards for me.
Also, I love the world teleportation sound, so that makes the experience even more so enjoyable for me!

I loved the plot twist of Zelda LA about the middle of the game's progression and the overall feel of it, especially all the eastereggs and references they added. The developers went nuts, felt free to do whatever was on their mind and I appreciated this a lot! It even fit the storyline in a way. I just wish they would try this kind of experimentation again.
I also felt like it was more rewarding talking to characters on the island, their dialogues changed more often depending on your progress than in ALTTP, which made me feel more connected to the inhabitants of the island, plus it was the game to introduce the trade sidequest. Keeping in mind it was just a GameBoy game and how impressive it is that they could even make a game like that for this hardware and still manage to give it such a great atmosphere, I could easily forgive that you could only have 16 hearts in total and roughly 8-9 dungeons. Well, 9 if you count the castle, 10 if you also count the colour-dungeon. While I appreciated the added photo sidequests and addition of colour in the DX version, I didn't like the few, admittedly minor changes to the game and the altered perfect ending. While it probably fits more, I found the original - admittedly minimal - perfect ending to be more uplifting. It allowed for more interpretation. Sometimes, less is just more after all. Overall, I found this Zelda game to be the saddest of all those I played though as it actually made me feel emotional, which in itself is a hard task.

Matter of fact: The DX version is one of those cartridges that works on a classic GameBoy too!


Anyway, I'm derailing into a lengthy post here...
To get back on topic, I felt like playing something that results in love overflow and turned on Yoshi's Story (N64).
This game is concentrated love!
While doing so, I noticed that I didn't have proper highscores on all levels yet, so I'm considering to do an alternating completion-run between this game and F-Zero X and try collect all hidden melons and hearts.

i did not pick up on the "darker" aspect, but it was more difficult which is expected and welcome. good amount of challenge for me, i made good use of the bombos medal especially in the ice dungeon with the green penguin enemies.

i thought it was very neat (if obviously needed) the way you were warped back to your starting position of using the mirror resulted in you being clipped inside an object. i actually didn't realize that was the purpose at first, i thought my game was glitching out. (i played it through VC on wii, never had a SNES).

i felt LA was darker in a way compared to majoras mask, qhile MM does have a more immediate "impeding doom" atmosphere, it is certain that everyone else (minus marin in the perfect ending) dies in LA's ending while people are actually saved on MM. truly an impressive little 8 bit game. sort of wish nintendo would take these kinds of risks again and let their devs run wild.

Hmm, apparently I have never heard of this "perfect ending."