Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
Sony will stop making physical PS5 discs by 2028, marking the end of physical games for Playstation and another sign of physical gaming's decline and eventual death. In this video, I give my thoughts on the situation and how gamers should react to an increasingly digital gaming space.
00:00 The Big News From Sony
00:35 Physical Games Aren't What They Used To Be
02:27 The Dangers Of Going All Digital
05:06 How Gamers Should Respond
Sony will stop making physical PS5 discs by 2028, marking the end of physical games for Playstation and another sign of physical gaming's decline and eventual death. In this video, I give my thoughts on the situation and how gamers should react to an increasingly digital gaming space.
00:00 The Big News From Sony
00:35 Physical Games Aren't What They Used To Be
02:27 The Dangers Of Going All Digital
05:06 How Gamers Should Respond
![Gunvein [PC/Switch] - Intense 1CC 4,950,647 pts. (Type C)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Xgv-hl4P-KY/mqdefault.jpg "Gunvein [PC/Switch] - Intense 1CC 4,950,647 pts. (Type C)
Gunvein is a bullet hell shmup published by NGDev and developed by Boghog, a member of the shmup community. It came out back in November of last year on Steam and recently, the game got ported over to the Nintendo Switch. This is NGDevs first time publishing an original game that was developed originally for PC, as they have been known in the past for creating games for older consoles in limited quantities.
Honestly, this has to be among the very best western shmups ever made. There was a time when Japan had an obvious stranglehold on the arcade shmup market, but that is no longer the case. This game holds its own with the heavy hitters like CAVE and Psikyo just fine. Gameplay wise, its like the love child of SDOJ, Crimzon Clover, and a Raizing shmup like Battle Garegga. This is one of the few shmups that encourages aggressive usage of bombs, as its a significant part of the scoring and not just meant for defensive purposes. The lock on shots for the Type A and Type B ships are reminiscent of Crimzon Clover, but Type C has a chargeable mini bomb in its place that makes it a very interesting ship, which Ill discuss soon enough.
You also have a hyper system that involves holding the Bomb button for a few seconds, giving you some brief invincibility frames at the beginning of it and increased damage for 4-5 seconds after activation. This is surprisingly useful for survival, but it costs you fragments that you gather throughout the stages to make your bombs. Speaking of fragments, you get those from filling up that Ready meter at the top right of the screen and using your lock-on shot at certain parts of the stages marked by a star.
As far as presentation goes, its excellent for an indie shmup. The graphics are top notch, though I did scale back the effects and darken the background slightly to maximize bullet visibility (not that it was bad in the first place though). Its also a bit more demanding hardware-wise on PC than your typical indie shmup on Steam because of the bells and whistles of the graphics. The soundtrack done by Exemia is a great fit for the game and the chaotic action that it presents.
This run was done on Intense difficulty, which is Gunveins equivalent of a Normal mode. As this difficulty, the game is quite challenging and comes close to matching the difficulty of a Cave game. The difficulty curve for the most part is pretty gradual outside of the Stage 3 Boss and Final Boss being big spikes, but the game is faster-paced than most shmups. I chose Type C because that ship does the best damage and is also the fastest, making it ideal for speed-killing enemies as soon as they get on screen. Type Cs bomb is not the best for doing damage, but it does have some extra i-frames after it is done firing off. Also, you need to be at a distance from enemies in order for it to hit them with that bomb.
While this run considering only of the main campaign, this game even has a Roguelike mode, which adds level ups granting you power-ups and messes with the layouts of stages considerably. I have not spent any time with this mode, but I may do so at some point. This may be a selling point for anyone looking for a roguelike shmup.
If you love shmups and havent played this game yet, I highly recommend it.
Also, shout outs to @morsalty and @clippa because their runs were very helpful to me early on for learning how the game worked when it first came out.
00:21 Stage 1
03:33 Stage 2
06:58 Stage 3
10:53 Stage 4
14:43 Stage 5
18:02 Final Boss
#gunvein #shmup #shmups #ngdev #arcadegames #bullethell #danmaku #steam #switch #nintendoswitch #indie")
![Alpine Ski [Arcade] - First Time Getting To Loop 8! 187,904 pts.](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/YhC1hQHT6zQ/mqdefault.jpg "Alpine Ski [Arcade] - First Time Getting To Loop 8! 187,904 pts.
Ive played a lot of Alpine Ski, but I would always get stuck on Loop 7. But recently, I had a breakthrough run that was good enough to get me to Loop 8 and a new high score of 187,904 points!
Ill be posting a much bigger discussion video soon about this game, so be on the lookout for that.
This run was done on the MAME Current core in RetroArch.
00:00 Intro and Loop 1
02:05 Loop 2
04:02 Loop 3
06:09 Loop 4
08:09 Loop 5
10:07 Loop 6
12:16 Loop 7
14:14 Loop 8")
![Bram Stokers Dracula [Game Boy] - No Death Playthrough](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZwukDeNMZuc/mqdefault.jpg "Bram Stokers Dracula [Game Boy] - No Death Playthrough
Bram Stokers Dracula was a popular horror movie released in 1992, based on the 1897 novel Dracula, that got quite a few different video game adaptions soon after. The 8-bit console and handheld versions are pretty much the same game with some obvious differences in terms of graphics, while the 16 bit games were all different. As far as I know, all of them were published by Sony Imagesoft and Psygnosis.
I have the Game Boy version from 1993, and Ill be talking more about this game in depth in a future because there are a ton of problems with this game. This game, like the NES, Game Gear, and Master System versions, was developed by Probe Entertainment. I did beat this game a few times with no continues on Hard Mode, including this No Death run. Somehow, even though this wasnt intended to be a speedrun, it was only about two or three minutes off from the World Record for non-glitch playthroughs on this difficulty.
00:00 Intro
00:17 Daytime 1
00:41 Nighttime 1
01:48 Daytime 2
03:09 Nighttime 2
05:58 Daytime 3
08:04 Nighttime 3
12:00 Daytime 4
13:14 Nighttime 4
17:40 Daytime 5
19:14 Nighttime 5
24:00 Daytime 6
26:09 Nighttime 6
29:30 Daytime 7
31:15 Nighttime 7
33:56 Ending + Credits")
![Tiger-Heli [Arcade] - First Loop 1CC 386,550 pts](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_ZWgdjiUjvs/mqdefault.jpg "Tiger-Heli [Arcade] - First Loop 1CC 386,550 pts
Tiger-Heli was Toaplans first shmup, released back in 1985. After beating Exed Exes, this clear came about pretty quickly. I struggled with this one quite a bit when I first played it but now, the patterns are a lot easier to read and it only took a little bit of extra practice, mostly on Stage 4, to get good enough to clear the first loop. I am considering doing a bigger video on this game after the DUSK video, discussing the impact of this game because this is an influential shmup.
Played on FBNeo in RetroArch with default settings and recorded in OBS Studio at 57.274 FPS to match the games original frame rate. If you are not on a VRR monitor, you will see some stuttering.
00:00 Intro
00:21 Stage 1
03:44 Stage 2
07:10 Stage 3
11:01 Stage 4
15:31 Loop 2")
![F-Zero X [N64] - X Cup Master Difficulty 1st Place Overall (Simple64)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aMdwwCQR0z8/mqdefault.jpg "F-Zero X [N64] - X Cup Master Difficulty 1st Place Overall (Simple64)
00:25. Stage 1
02:11. Stage 2
03:36. Stage 3
05:24. Stage 4
07:09. Stage 5
09:09. Stage 6
10:54. Ending
F-Zero X will always be one of my favorite N64 games. Its definitely my favorite racing game on the system and proof that Nintendo could easily make a skill-based arcade racer. I spent a lot of time with this game growing up and decided to revisit it with this playthrough.
The X Cup is interesting because it consists of randomized courses. While there are certain course layouts that reappear frequently albeit with some tweaks usually, the order is always randomized and you dont know which course youll get until youre about to take off. This makes it hard to come up with the right settings and outside of doing some save states, its hard to practice. The AI drivers, probably due to the random nature of this cup, are not as strong as they are in the other cups on Master and are closer to Expert difficulty in terms of performance. At least they mostly stay on the course.
This run had some good performances as I won Stage 1, 4, and 6 outright, but I fell short by finishing second on Stages 2 and 5 while my lowest performance was 6th on Stage 3. However, I did manager to kill my rival on Stage 3 so that benefited me greatly. I was a little bit rusty here as this was one of my first times playing this in years, but I think I did well considering that. I still need to do more practice and figure out the right speed settings for the tracks before I can beat the other cups on Master.
I do have plans to play more N64 racers in the future. In fact, Im considering doing a Wave Race 64 championship run on Expert.
Played on the Simple64 emulator with x4 upscaling.
#fzerox #fzero #n64 #retrogaming #nintendo64 #nintendo #emulation #racinggames")
![Gradius [PSP/Arcade] - First Loop No Miss 1CC 373,600 pts (Gradius Collection)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/aVZ_UWcUbEQ/mqdefault.jpg "Gradius [PSP/Arcade] - First Loop No Miss 1CC 373,600 pts (Gradius Collection)
00:18. Stage 1-1
02:37. Stage 1-2
04:36. Stage 1-3
06:37. Stage 1-4
08:55. Stage 1-5
11:03. Stage 1-6
12:30. Stage 1-7
15:21. Stage 2-1 (start of Second Loop)
Gradius is one of the most famous shmup franchises of all time. When the original Gradius first came out in arcades in 1985, it was a big success especially in Japan and there wasnt anything else quite like it. It has a unique powerup system which became a staple of the series, increasing your ships power while allowing you to make strategic decisions. It also features some pretty advanced level design for its time and some memorable parts like the Moai heads in Stage 3.
However, theres one other thing this game started thats quite infamous and its Gradius Syndrome. Basically, if you die, youre screwed because you lose all your power ups. Recovering is almost impossible, especially in later stages of the first loop and beyond. It is even worse in some other games in the series, most notably the arcade version of Gradius III and its notorious difficulty.
Because of the Gradius Syndrome, my goal was to No-Miss the first loop and I managed to pull it off. This took me longer that I would like to admit because Im also much worse at horis than I am at vertical shmups. Thankfully, the loops here are pretty short. The hardest stages are Stages 3, 4, and 7. Stages 4 and 7 are aggravating because of the enemies that come from behind on the ceiling and the floor. I did not last long in the second loop.
The double shot was very helpful in Stage 4 to take out the hatches and also in Stage 5 with the weird tentacle brain enemies, but I stuck with the lasers otherwise. Speaking of the lasers, they have a larger hitbox than the line suggests, which is something I exploited as much as possible. Also, I took 2 speedups, which made my ship harder to control in tighter areas but it did help me to be more aggressive. Speedups also affect how far your options are spread out, which improves the effectiveness of your laser.
I played this game via the Gradius Collection in PPSSPP. This is a excellent compilation developed by M2 that was released on the PSP in 2006 in North America. It features I, II, III, IV, and Gaiden all in one collection. You can tweak the settings quite a bit, as you can tweak the slowdown, the hitboxes, overall difficulty, and whether you want pickups to be activated automatically, semi-auto, or manually. I played it on the arcade presets outside of using semi-auto pickup activation for the minor quality of life improvement. Automatic pickup activation was already a thing by Parodius Da! so these options were not new to this compilation by any means, and Gokujo Parodius added semi-auto. This port feels extremely accurate to the arcade original, as to be expected from M2.
Special thanks to @exmosquito, @Shepardus, and @dumplechan because their videos of this game were quite helpful as I was practicing for my clear of this game.
#gradius #shmups #psp #konami #retrogaming #arcadegames")
![Ghost Blade HD [PC] - No Miss Score Attack Run 1,043,947,200 pts (Milan)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bxr-l-5m7D0/mqdefault.jpg "Ghost Blade HD [PC] - No Miss Score Attack Run 1,043,947,200 pts (Milan)
I decided to give the Score Attack mode in Ghost Blade HD a chance recently and honestly, its a great idea. More bullet hell shmups should have a caravan-style mode like this. Of course, it is dragged down somewhat by the flaws inherent to Ghost Blade HD: poor visibility, weird movement, and level design that feels like a bunch of bullets slopped together with little rhyme or reason. However, these flaws are not as big of a problem in a shorter mode like this.
I played as Milan a lot on this mode. Milan is the hardest character to score with in this game, but I wanted to see what I could do with the weaker character in this case.")
