Current Console UI's are Garbage

The PS4 menu is cluttered and nothing seems to fit together like it should. I would much prefer if they used the PS3 menu, which also isn't good, but it's passable at least. And it has ads. Ew.

The Xbox One menu suffers from the opposite problem that the PS4 and Xbox 360 menus suffer from- everything is grouped poorly. The Xbox One menu is grouped very strangely, and it doesn't make much sense. It's a bit difficult to navigate with a whole ton of garbage being on every page. It also has ads on it, so ew. It has 4 tabs and a bunch of sidebar stuff. I don't like the sidebar. It's not easy to navigate.

The Switch menu is bland and uninspired. There are only 2 themes and I'm not a fan of the sleep button and settings button being where they are. It only shows 12 games on the home page and you can't set it to show more at once, even though you can do that on the 3DS. The eShop button should be before the message boards, but that's a small gripe. It doesn't have ads on it though, so it at least has one advantage.

Now for some good menus.

On the Dreamcast, everything is divided into 4 categories that all make sense. If you have a game, run the game. If you have a CD, play the CD. You can also do stuff on the memory card or check settings. Everything is well-animated, and it also tells the time and date in case you don't have a calendar. The background is nice, and there's another theme if you press start while bootup with a Puyo Puyo Fever save on your VMU. It's pretty neat.

The GameCube Menu is set up in a similar way, but it makes calendar settings its own menu and removes the CD option. Not as nice, but it's simple and clean. It also fits well with the cube theme.

The Wii menu has a very clean and neat organization system. All the games and apps are in windows, and everything else you need is down below. If you have games on an SD Memory Card, there is a separate menu. I wish there weren't, but it helps with organization. Notifications are on the right and settings/memory are on the left. I don't mind that memory is included with settings. It sort of fits, actually. The motion controller makes navigating this menu really easy- with a standard controller, a UI like this might be annoying or frustrating to navigate. But due to the speed and versatility you get with a Wii Remote, it's pretty good.

So why is it like this? I don't know, but my guesstimate is that consoles do so much now that don't fit well with anything involved with gaming, so they just throw it in wherever. That's just a hunch though.

I don't know how to end this post, so goodbye

Q&A - The Mapmaker's Legend has Direction and a Key. Accept the Declination, But What Good is it to Me?

Explanation - Unrepentant vagabond

Plot the new coordinates and cast the map aside

Now I gotta ramble on

Navigate the pitfalls and cross the great divide

A - I can't see the rationality. The world's not my responsibility! Happiness isn't there for me, but maybe I'll inch closer to the source when I find true north, with or without a friend. We'll keep searching to the end.

I can answer many fantastic questions such as this and many others with Pailey at my website Ask Pailey and Josh. Go visit it or else

Game Boy Advance SP Snippet

Oops, I haven't made a post since October. I guess I had better do something about that. So here's a little bit about the Game Boy Advance from a video project I'm working on right now.

"In 2002, Nintendo released a new model titled the Game Boy Advance SP. It has a clamshell design for better portability, a frontlit screen, new triggers, and a rechargeable battery. While the screen and triggers are an improvement over the original, the d-pad and buttons are much more clicky and my hands feel cramped. I understand why people like it, but it’s not my favorite design. The SP had tons of great color options though. I’ve owned a blue one and a red one before, but I really want the Limited Edition SpongeBob Squarepants version. That one is awesome."

Fun fact, the SpongeBob Squarepants GBA SP is a model AGS-101. Because of that, it has a better screen than most other Game Boy Advances, with the exception of the NES themed one and the Game Boy Micro. Good stuff, that SpongeBob GBA.

Switch Fixes

I've owned the Switch for about 2 months now, and I think I'm ready to talk about what could and should be done to fix it.

First of all, fix the UI. It looks bad; cheap; not great. It looks like what I imagine the GameCube OS would look like if it had not had anything to do with a cube. So what should it actually look like? Well, I'll show you.

Hey, would you look at that. It's the Wii U Menu.

The Wii U Menu is well-designed. It can show 15 main things at a time compared to the 3 that the Switch can show. You could say that the Switch only shows 3 at a time because it has to work on a tablet, but all 15 things show on the Wii U GamePad just fine, no problem. The Switch uses the same screen size with a higher resolution; the Switch should at least show 6 at a time.

Another thing that needs to be fixed is similar, but not the same. The menu needs themes. The way it is, the 2 colors shades aren't cutting it. Add themes. I want my Dreamcast theme, Nintendo.

Another thing that needs refining is the eShop. It's near impossible to find anything in it at this point. It has a search system, but the games themselves are categorized poorly. I feel that the Wii Shop Channel categorized things well; It divided things into Virtual Console games, WiiWare games, and apps. So what the eShop should do now is to divide it into Virtual Console games like the NEO GEO AES and Arcade games, eShop exclusives such as the Jackbox Party Pack and Sonic Mania, and retail games such as Arms and Super Bomberman R. Apps would be added later. Then each of those categories are divided by genre, release date, and company. If it was divided like this, I'm sure it would be much easier to use.

Finally, fix the friend system. Replace friend codes with usernames and add a Discord system. The friend codes are too long and randomized for it to be easy to remember. You'd have to have it written down somewhere. I can say "Add me on Xbox Live: Storm9CP" much easier than I can say "Add me on Switch: SW-1802837501918723905 or whatever" From what I hear, things like Netflix and YouTube and Discord are all ready to be launched and Nintendo just has to allow it. So why doesn't Nintendo just allow people to use Discord on the console instead of their dumb mobile phone app?

Going on a bit of a tangent with the mobile phone app, most people complain about it draining their battery. That's fair, but I'm more concerned that it's using more bandwidth. Is it? I have no idea. But if it is, that's no good.

Anyway, that's about all I have for now. Goodbye!