Kustom Kid

Hey everyone. Long time no see. As per usual I fall in and out of being online much. My son wiped my only backup hard drive of games, so I have been working on putting that back together. It all got me to thinking about GameEx and the amazing crew that always seems to be here, so I thought I would check it. It's good to be back. Anywho, I have some Steam keys to give away if that is alright. I bought the Starlight Children's Foundation Humble Bundle and I already owned a few of the games and Pinball FX3 tables included. So, if you want to be super cool, you'll just buy the bundle for $10 (LINK) or more and get everything. But, if you just need, or want, one or two of the items I have offered than by all means shoot me a PM on here and I will send you the key. First come, first served. And I will limit it to two items per user as I wouldn't want to discourage anyone from getting the bundle. Humble Bundle is fricking amazing and this is nearly half the bundle right here. Items Available will be updated after they have been claimed. STAR WARS - Knights of the Old Republic STAR WARS Knights of the Old Republic II - The Sith Lords STAR WARS Jedi Knight - Jedi Academy STAR WARS Jedi Knight II - Jedi Outcast Grim Fandango Remastered Day of the Tentacle Remastered STAR WARS - The Force Unleashed Ultimate Sith Edition Pinball FX3 - Star Wars Pinball - Balance of the Force (The pack includes Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi, Starfighter Assault, and a table dedicated to Darth Vader. ) That's it my friends. Good to see some familiar faces and new ones as well!!! Happy gaming.

Thanks @tthurman. All is well. The man cave is all but done. I just need to build a proper pedestal for the joystick box, and I'm looking to install a projector for movie nights and the like. Maybe I'll post some pictures in my other thread.

Greetings and salutations, I know it's been a minute since I've been on here, but I want to share this because I'm sure some of you might want to take the trip to see it. A pinball only arcade opened a few months ago just outside of Fort Wayne, Indiana. It's called Wizard's World. They're already in the process of expanding. I believe they have 30 tables at the moment with plans to expand to over 60. I've yet to go, but it looks awesome. If anyone finds themselves in the area give a shout out and I'd love to show you how bad I am at pinball and have a pint with you.

First off, thank you Tom, and everyone else, for your hard work and dedication to this amazing software. It's much appreciated. Secondly, I think it's a good idea to spin off a free HTPC solution. It was a long time ago, but I'm pretty sure I found GameEx researching HTPC software. At the time I decided to go with Windows Media Center. WMC was fairly easy to setup, I could use Xbox 360's as extenders, and Emby (Media Browser at the time) integrated well with ripped DVDs and music for both the 360's and the PC. Currently there is Kodi, which I find kind of clunky and has come under fire as of late, Plex which I'm also not a big fan of, and Emby. If the GameEx HTPC solution were as feature rich as the primary software I would imagine it could really take off. I just bought an Xbox One to keep app usage simple for my girlfriend and myself. It was a pain in the butt using a PC because we always had to have a keyboard/trackpad handy to use different apps. On the Xbon we use HDHomerun DVR, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. I haven't sprung for Emby Premiere, so all of my ripped content is sitting on a hard drive waiting for me to figure out what to do with it. Long story longer, and I don't even think it's possible, but a single app to aggregate the multitude of live TV/DVR, streaming, and local content into one place would be a godsend.

I would agree that Super Metroid is the best of the series, with Metroid Prime being a very close second. After those two it's a toss up as to how the rest of them stack up. I'd say Zero Mission, MP 2, MP 3, Return of Samus, Fusion, Metroid, Other M, Metroid II. I've enjoyed every title, even Other M, and in their own right there really isn't a bad game in the main series. I still go through one or two of the 2D games every year, and I always have an active Prime game working be it MP 1 2 or 3. There might be a slight obsession going on here.

Jeeeesus. I watched the entire 1 hour and 12 minute video. While I didn't learn anything new, it's a good watch for someone who's curious about the series.

As long as there's more Ridley and less Adam Malkovich I'll probably be ok with a Metroid movie. Hell, save metroids for a sequel and make an origin movie about Samus, the Chozo, and the Space Pirates.

Looks good. I appreciate the attention to detail in keeping your wiring clean. And since no one else has said it "Boom Shaka Lakka. He's on fire!"

I set up both an Echo Dot and Google Home. The setup is similar for both. Personally I went with Google over the Echo because I've been using Google Assistant for a while now on my phone. You set your start and end routines in the Harmony app for each activity. Then you connect your Harmony Hub to your smart speaker though the Alexa app. Both Echo and Home do not require anything else set up to work properly. You'll have to figure out what you say to get the desired result, but is fairly intuitive. You can say "Alexa, turn on the tv" or "Alexa, skip back 30 seconds" "Alexa pause the tv" or anything like that and it will do it. So, if I'm in the kitchen getting a snack before I head down to the basement I can say "Hey Google, tell Harmony to turn on Fire TV" it will start and run through the activity named Fire TV that was set up on the Harmony. The nice thing is it'll run a lot of IoT devices. I have a Nest Thermostat, and Hue lights connected at the moment. But you can connect smart plugs, switches, other hubs like Wink or Smart Home. I'll try to get a video for you at some point so you can see it in action.

Try and fix the one you have and if it doesn't work trade it in. Both of the ones you can get with the coupon ($100 for the Companion Home or $250 for the Elite) have a hub that sends IR, Wi-Fi, RF, and Bluetooth, so you'll be good to go. I have it set up to dim my Philips Hue lights when I watch tv, and raise them up once everything is turned off. It turns on and the Wii, PS3, PS4, Xbox One, and Firestick TV . It integrates with Google Home and Amazon Echo as well. They're really amazing products. I got the Companion because I couldn't justify the extra $150 for the nicer remote. They both use the same app for a smart phone or tablet. We'll eventually get a tablet for the basement to run everything. Until then we will just use the included, not as nice remote, and our phones.

Hey gang, I just wanted to share a deal some of you stateside guys might be interested in. Now until November Best Buy is offering a trade in program for Logitech Harmony remotes. You bring in your old Harmony remote and they print a coupon for $50 of a Home Companion or $100 of the Elite. I traded in 350 that I bought refurbished on Amazon for $20, so it's for any Harmony remote. I was able to stack the deal with another and get an Amazon Echo Dot for free. Grand total $85.59 after tax for a $150 remote and $50 Echo Dot. You may not be able to stack the deals though. It took about 10 minutes of wheeling and dealing which eventually lead to the assistant store manager giving the ok. Once it got up to him though he said yes fairly quickly because there was nothing that said the deals couldn't stack. YMMV though.

We use something similar to that at work for presentations and whatnot. Connection is spotty sometimes, but it works ok most of the time. There is a bit of lag though, so probably not ideal. These are the same as the 8bitdo Arcade Sticks, so if you can't find one brand the other should be exactly the same. The 8bitdo version sold out in a day on Amazon a few weeks back. I haven't checked to see if it's back in stock yet or not.

She would get rid of me before the dogs! It took about 10 hours total to get everything on the wall. We washed the machining oil off first. Then I assembled the pipes tight enough that they weren't wobbly, found the measurement which gave the best amount of support to wobble ratio for the the vertical and horizontal pipes, and set everything to that. Then I screwed the top most flange into the stud/wall using combination anchor screws. I made sure everything was level as I worked my way down to the other flanges with the one on the floor done last for each. It was easy to do, just time consuming, and you had to check your work every time you moved anything. Thanks for the kind words everyone.

@stigzler We do have an overhead light box that I could use for a projector, but I don't want to deal with wiring up the HDMI and whatnot.I love our dogs. I'd never get rid of them. Or the wife for that matter. Here's another project I did. This one is book shelves in the main dining room/living room. I know steel pipe shelves have been done to death, but the cost for custom bookshelves are insane. I'll probably do something similar, but on a way smaller scale, for the man cave.

Good looking out @tthurman We've actually bought those exact frames before, but not with the savings you mentioned. I'm not sure what I'm going to put up on the walls yet. I have an old poster from the 70's and a wooden sign from work that are going up. I'm sure something Metroid and Star Wars related will end up there as well. That might be it.

@hansolo77 4 years ago I lost my house and was living with my parents. I busted my butt, and had a little luck, to get back to good. I moved out of state and started sorting my life out. It didn't hurt that Fort Wayne, Indiana has the lowest cost of living in the country either. @stigzler the ladder is used to get into that little loft area. You can see a bean bag chair up there and my Struggle Stick. It's a continuation of the bay window from the main floor.

What's up crew? I just wanted to show off my mancave; currently a work in progress. So far we have a decent 55" 4K display, a 24" monitor for pinball backglasses and game marquees, a dedicated gaming pc, Xbox 360 mostly for Windows Media Center, PS2, Wii, and a set of inexpensive Logitech 5.1 speakers. The bookcase swings open for storage underneath the front porch which we call the Narnia room, a loft for my son to hang out on, a board game/puzzle area with table and storage, and my mess of a work desk. All I have left is to get a comfortable euro recliner for solo gaming, get rid of the old tv, fix the railing, get a receiver for legit surround sound, build a pedestal for my arcade stick (which is also only about 3/4 done), get some more stuff on the walls, and get GameEx and PinballX fully functional again. So that's a big part of why I haven't been active much on here lately. Between working on this, plus other stuff in our house, getting our old house ready to sell and then finally selling it, and work clobbering me, I've been busy. Thanks for checking this out.

I played the hell out of that game. So much fun!

Atari is coming out with a new PC based console. Here's the website. Details are very sparse at the moment.

The ROMs are curated. Although I have full romsets for most everything, I don't want to wade through a bunch of crap to get to the games that will actually be played. Still debating on setting up Nintendo DS, Atari 5200, Atari 7800, Sega Saturn, Daphnie, NEC TurboGrafix16, and a possibly a few others.

Splatoon with my son is really fun, but that's about it for me. As for the Switch USF 2, BotW, and Metroid Prime 4 are making it look increasingly like it's a must buy at this point. Glaring faults and all. Samus Returns looks pretty sweet too! Now the aggressive AM2R takedown looks a tiny smidge less crappy in hindsight.

@Adultery I was on the fence because of the things @tthurman posted. There were 6 Switches at the store the other day, and I almost bought one, but I held off. The only thing out that really interests me is BotW. I'm a fanboy too. The only systems I haven't owned are the Wii U, the Switch, and the top loading NES. I've had every iteration of the Gameboy, GBA, DS, and 3DS (even the 2DS).

Because Metroid Prime 4 has been announced. I'm ridiculously excited. Looks like I'll finally have to finish Prime 3...and maybe Other M...ok not Other M.

Happy birthday, Draco. I see you for a new profile picture for your birthday.

I won't miss it. I'll never see it, and I won't miss it. This is going to be a steaming pile of giant albino gorilla turd.