Yeah, you can play the game upscaled to any resolution you want and in widescreen, and it looks very nice (apart from the widescreen patch occasionally displaying stuff that was not intended to be seen):

The reason for the fan server only working with the Japanese versions of the games is because the JPN region servers were what the team behind the fan server managed to reverse engineer. The US and European server were killed in 2007 while Capcom kept the Japanese servers going on for 4 more years. There’s actually a video about the creation of the fan server on Youtube.

I guess I don’t need to sleep if its a weekend

It is, actually. The wiki at obsrv.org has instructions on how to set things up on a real PS2 and in fact recommends it as the most stable option. Not sure if there would be load time shenanigans between a PS2’s DVD read speed and emulators running on all sorts of different devices.

http://wiki.obsrv.org/index.php?n=Main.HomePage

It looks like you can also play on a PS3! Neat.

Note that you will need a way to run the patched Japanese isos at the very least, unless you have the original Japanese discs on hand and the region locking isn’t an issue.

Remember that you don’t need to hard mod your PS2 in this day and age with things like FreeMCBoot.

PCSX2 has a Linux version so you should be good to go. (Steam Deck users can play the games online too, in case any are reading this)

I think I saw someone mention somewhere that the Xbox port of PCSX2 works with online games including the Outbreak fan server, so maybe the Android version does too? 🤔

Edit: Looked into it and netplay was never implemented. It does indeed work on XBSX2 though, according to this post

I found a sprouted pepper seed growing out of my sink drain

And it’s actually Mark that Kevin dislikes. Kevin’s a great character mechanically, I just think it’s funny that those Japanese devs, either intentionally or not, painted a very realistic picture of these characters relationships…

To be honest, I don’t think Kevin’s a particularly realistic-feeling rendition of an American cop. He’s way too friendly and laid back, and he reminds me more of Dante than your typical , not that I’m complaining

Yoko’s another great character for beginners. 8 inventory slots is a game changer in this game

Funnily enough, the two noobs in my group are Kevin and Yoko while the veteran is using characters like Jim and Alyssa.

If you’re looking into setting up the games, this video’s pretty good, but you can skip all the stuff about iso patching since CdRomance has the required English-patched Japanese isos ready to go. Honestly, waiting for the roms to download is probably the longest part in setting the game up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFVibXHwP7A

I, uhh… kinda like Kevin since he’s a very simple, noob-friendly character with his potshot ability, strong starting pistol, kick and good speed & health stats . Is Jim the one he dislikes? I know the two of them have a funny special ending in the final scenario in File 1

I never really got into the game that much because it felt lacking as an offline experience. 20 years later I’m finally enjoying it in co-op, and I encourage you to give the Resurrection server a shot if you still want that itch scratched. You could probably have both File 1 and 2 running in less than an hour. The hardest part would be finding people to play with, though I think you can look for people on the Outbreak Resurrection forums and Discord. Maybe there’s enough RE fans on Hexbear to get a game going

Kiss my ass bitch!!

You can even hear him say this in the video. Was that the Jim player actually using his ability? I didn’t see what was happening so I thought he was just getting pummeled by the boss

MY LIFE IS SHIT

I had never really played Outbreak too much back in the day since it just didn’t appeal to me as a single player experience even though I loved all the other Resident Evil games. As soon as I heard about the fan server I knew I had to try it out with some friends.

From what I understand the fans reverse-engineered the server by analyzing the packets the PS2 was sending out to the official game servers, not that I really know what that means It was just unbelievably cool to get to experience the PS2 online experience 20 years later and I have nothing but respect for the sorts of people who make things like emulation and fan servers possible

Having done a couple of test runs with a few different friends, I can agree that yeah, the adlib system is cool… but I definitely wouldn’t want to have to rely on it. If Capcom made a game like this today (which they won’t since they seem to prefer failed live services like RE:Verse or that Resistance thing) a proximity chat system like in Lethal Company would probably be a good fit.

I already know it’s on its way out, CrystalDiskInfo has been flagging it as “Caution” for like three years now due to the amount of reallocated sectors. I only use it for Windows restoration points since I figure out it’s not likely my Windows install and the drive are going to go bye bye on the same day. I’ll replace it the next time I splurge on a big hard drive.

Thankfully it looks that way. I was just disappointed it was once again something specific to AMD hardware.

Yes, both Ryujinx and Yuzu can do multiplayer by emulating the Switch’s wireless functionality, though Yuzu’s servers have been shut off for obvious reasons. You can still play online on Yuzu through Hamachi or similar though.

Other emulators also have multiplayer, several PS2 multiplayer games are playable on PCSX2 with community servers and there’s an entire Xbox Live replacement service for the original Xbox.

Might be fun to mess with some multiplayer Switch emulation with Ryujinx 🤔

Somehow this plain family car makes perfect sense as a collaboration between huge German and Japanese corporations.

But it’s not even a cool product placement car

Well when I say Fortnite monetization, I also mean that the intent seems to be to also buy into existing licenses and throw a bunch of disparate IP together. It looks like they have Spongebob out the gate and plan to get characters based on streamers (ick)… but just to give an idea.

Not gonna lie, that sounds pretty grim

Monetization seems like another thing MK8D has over CTR:NF from the looks of it. From what I can tell MK8D only has simple DLC packs that add more tracks and characters where CTR:NF had a whole battle pass arrangement with the usual loads and loads of ugly skins and cosmetics. When I first unlocked all the DLC and Pit Stop content I went at all the ugly character recolors and distracting, animated skins that were suddenly populating my races. Oh cool, it’s a green Neo Cortex whose tires leave behind rainbows

(not antinatalist, but do hate mk8d babies)

I don’t care for them either. Mario and Luigi don’t even have the same art style as their adult counterparts, looking like they’re from some European comic book. I actually think the character selection is a bit lame overall in Mario Kart 8D. Maybe it’s because I’m not a huge Nintendo head but so much of it is wasted on random generic Mario mooks who don’t have much personality. Nintendo has so many franchises but the only ones represented here outside of Mario are Donkey Kong, Animal Crossing, F-Zero and Zelda. Where the fuck is Pokemon??? That’s like an entire game’s worth of track concepts right there.

There’s a pc kart racer in development that looks promising called Oh Baby Kart. It doesn’t look as bad as most PC kartracers, at least from early screens.

I probably wouldn’t care about a kart racer without an established license even if it was good, sadly. It feels weirdly integral to the entire appeal of the genre