All posts by Metal Jesus Rocks

Featured, Mobile & Handhelds

My PLAYSTATION HANDHELDS Collection! (PSP, PS Vita, Portal & PocketStation)

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Sony’s handheld lineup feels like a family reunion where everyone showed up with wildly different personalities and one guy brought a Tamagotchi from 1999 just to keep things spicy.

PSP (The Cool Older Sibling)
The PlayStation Portable walked into 2005 like it owned the place. Sleek, shiny, and blasting full-on console vibes from a device that fit in your hoodie pocket. It played movies, music, and games like it was auditioning to replace your entire entertainment center. Also introduced the world to the UMD disc, aka “tiny frisbee of destiny.” Loading times? Yes. Style? Immaculate.

PS Vita (The Underrated Genius)
Then came the PlayStation Vita, the kid who brought a supercomputer to a group project and still got ignored. Gorgeous OLED screen, dual analog sticks (finally!), and enough power to make you say, “Wait, this is handheld?!” Sony supported it like a New Year’s resolution… briefly and with fading enthusiasm. Meanwhile, indie devs adopted it like a cozy art house café, and it quietly became a cult legend.

PlayStation Portal (The Remote-Control Cousin)
The PlayStation Portal is that cousin who doesn’t bring their own snacks but eats yours while streaming Netflix from your account. It’s not a standalone handheld, it’s basically your PS5 on a very long invisible leash. When your Wi-Fi is strong, it feels like magic. When it’s not… it feels like interpretive dance made of lag.

PocketStation (The Weird Little Goblin)
And finally, the PocketStation. This thing looks like a calculator that wandered into a JRPG and never left. It was a memory card… that also played games… that also had a tiny screen… because why not? Peak “let’s experiment and see what happens” energy. Honestly, it walked so modern companion apps could run.

The Vibe Check
Together, they form a chaotic saga:
PSP: “I am the future.”
Vita: “I was the future.”
Portal: “I borrow the future.”
PocketStation: “I am… confusion, but adorable.”

Sony didn’t just make handhelds. They made a whole cinematic universe of ambition, innovation, and the occasional “wait, what exactly is this?” energy.

Featured, Mobile & Handhelds

This controller ROCKS for mobile emulators! GameSir Pocket Taco

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Relive the golden age of physical buttons with the GameSir Pocket Taco, a vertical bluetooth controller that turns your phone into a tiny retro time machine. It’s compact & budget friendly. Just snap in your phone and forget the touch screens with your favorite games.
Kickstarter: https://bit.ly/kkgspt1
Official website: https://bit.ly/pockettaco1

Featured, Mobile & Handhelds

Playdate: 4 years later is full of Hidden Gems!

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Year 4 with the delightfully oddball Playdate, a tiny yellow handheld that proves big fun can come in small, crank-powered packages. I show you some surprisingly clever games, and of course the famous little crank that turns gameplay into something completely different. This is FULL of HIDDEN GEM games!

PLAYDATE GAMES SHOWN:
Taria & Como
Long Puppy
Shadowgate PD
The Whiteout
Chance’s Lucky Escape
Tiny Turnip
Tau
Propeller Rat
Galactic Groove!
Dig Dig Dino
Blippo+
Diora
Trackminia
Snow!

Featured, Metal Jesus Likes

Why is the Nex Playground outselling the XBOX?!

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The Nex Playground is basically what happens when a handheld console dreams big, skips its morning coffee, and decides it can be “everything at once.” It’s small, it’s portable, and it tries to pack in more features than a Swiss Army knife on a sugar rush. Retro gaming? Check. Modern-ish emulation? Check. Random button combos that make you question reality? Double check.

Holding it feels like gripping a tiny arcade in your hands—one that may or may not spontaneously remind you why you thought playing 2000s flash games on a touchscreen was a good idea. The games are a mix of charmingly nostalgic and “wait, this exists?” weirdness, which is perfect if you enjoy both discovering hidden gems and mildly panicking over whether the console will survive the next firmware update. The Nex Playground: it’s quirky, chaotic, and capable of turning a five-minute session into an existential dive into gaming history.

Featured, Music

Mike Portnoy Plays “Home” on Drumeo | Dream Theater

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Mike Portnoy is the kind of drummer who makes the rest of us feel like we’ve been politely tapping pencils on our desks for no reason our whole lives. As the co-founder and rhythmic engine of Dream Theater, he doesn’t just keep time—he practically builds cities out of drum fills, complex polyrhythms, and jaw-dropping stamina, all while somehow smiling like it’s casual Tuesday.

Watching Portnoy play is like watching a caffeinated octopus in a tuxedo audition for a PhD in percussion. He can switch from thunderous double bass madness to delicate jazz-inflected ghost notes without breaking a sweat, and fans still argue over which is more impressive: his technical wizardry or the fact he somehow remembers every drum part ever written. In short, Mike Portnoy is the human embodiment of “too many notes, but somehow perfect,” and the rest of us are just grateful he’s busy drumming so we don’t have to.

Featured, Travel, Metal Jesus Likes

JRPGLife Explores Seattle’s Retro Game Scene (Worth the Hype?)

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Seattle’s retro gaming scene is basically a treasure hunt disguised as a coffee-fueled lifestyle. It’s where flannel-wearing collectors, caffeine-addled speedrunners, and nostalgia historians roam the aisles of dusty game shops like archeologists hunting for buried cartridges. Somewhere between Pike Place and a Side Street arcade, you’ll find people debating the superiority of NES controllers while sipping $6 lattes, all with the intensity of a Seahawks game.

The city has enough retro game stores, conventions, and collector meetups to make you think it’s secretly powered by a giant SNES in a basement somewhere. Local arcades still glow with CRT screens and the comforting hum of pinball machines, while garage sales offer the occasional jackpot—sometimes literally, if someone left a working Neo Geo in a box. In Seattle, retro gaming isn’t just a hobby; it’s a lifestyle, a mild obsession, and an excuse to justify owning more plastic than IKEA.

Featured, Metal Jesus Likes

Why Seattle’s light rail network is about to double in size!

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Seattle is the city that looks like it was designed by a lovechild of a coffee bean and a cloud. Its skyline is perpetually flirting with fog, the Space Needle looks like it’s silently judging your life choices, and somehow everyone carries an umbrella even when it’s only lightly misting. It’s a place where you can sip a $7 oat milk latte while arguing passionately about the best local IPA, all while contemplating if your raincoat doubles as formalwear.

The city prides itself on being “outdoorsy,” which mostly means hiking up hills that make your legs question their loyalty to your body, then bragging about it on Instagram while your dog gives you the side-eye. Traffic exists in a parallel dimension where time stretches like taffy, and the Seahawks can cause citywide emotional whiplash in a single Sunday. Seattle is a mix of stunning natural beauty, artisanal everything, and a mild existential dread delivered with a drizzle—and somehow, people love it anyway.

Featured, System Reviews, PC Games

OneXPlayer Super X Review – Expensive… but Powerful Windows Tablet

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I dive deep into the Super X powered by the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395 with 16 Zen 5 cores and 32 threads, paired with Radeon 8060S graphics that punch surprisingly close to RTX 4060 territory. We’re talking a gorgeous 14″ 2.8K AMOLED display at 2880 x 1800, 60 to 120Hz with VRR, 500 nits brightness, and HDR support, all wrapped in a sleek 1.3kg chassis with a stepless hinge, optional RGB keyboard, Harman audio, WiFi 7, and Windows 11 Home. I break down real-world performance with Cyberpunk 2077 hitting around 60 FPS on high at 75W, Need for Speed Heat running smoothly even at 45W, Red Dead Redemption II balancing between 30 to 60 FPS depending on the chaos on screen, and Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart and Tainted Grail showing how resolution tweaks and FSR3 can make all the difference. This machine is built to replace multiple flagship devices by transforming across six pro-level modes from laptop to high-performance gaming rig. One device. Six modes. A serious contender for your all-in-one powerhouse.

OneXPlayer Super X Gaming Tablet-Laptop Hybrid

Featured, Metal Jesus Likes

Gaming off the Grid Pick Ups Video | Switch, PS1, Dreamcast & MORE!

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Gaming Off the Grid is the YouTube channel for people who think “retro” means more than just pixelated graphics—it’s a lifestyle, a philosophy, and occasionally a small fire hazard from all the old consoles stacked in one room. The channel dives into obscure, rare, and often hilariously niche gaming hardware and software that most of us didn’t even know existed, let alone wanted to buy… until we watched a video and suddenly feel morally obligated to hunt it down.

Watching Gaming Off the Grid is like touring a museum curated by a slightly obsessive, very enthusiastic friend who keeps whispering, “Wait, you have to see this weird thing I found in 1987!” Expect a mix of awe, nostalgia, and occasional “why does this even exist?” moments, delivered with just enough humor to make you laugh while your wallet quietly panics.

Featured, Music

Kevin Cronin (REO Speedwagon) interview with Billy Corgan

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REO Speedwagon is proof that rock ‘n’ roll can be both relentlessly earnest and secretly genius. On one hand, they churn out power ballads so sticky and heartfelt that your grandma, your high school crush, and your cat could all cry to the same song—and somehow it feels totally deserved. On the other hand, they can crank out riffs and hooks that hit harder than a ton of hair-sprayed 80s hair metal rolled into a stadium anthem.

They perfected the art of turning heartbreak into sing-along glory, proving that soaring choruses, dramatic key changes, and lyrics about love, loss, and redemption can be a shared emotional experience. REO Speedwagon isn’t just a band; they’re an emotional rollercoaster with guitars, and if you don’t catch yourself belting “Can’t Fight This Feeling” in the shower at least once, are you even human?