I know of the Genesis game but never played it (though I do own the newer titles in the series), but did some digging to see what I could find to answer your questions:

Am I imagining this games difficulty? I feel like I am making little progress and I’m always getting ganged up on. / Does this game require a lot of grinding or repeating tasks before moving on?

Everything I’m finding is saying yes to both, with the grinding resulting in the increased money, stats, contacts, equipment and practicing/refining your own strategy for completing runs. Luckily, there are multiple strategies for “quick” grinding, and certain equipment and stats that really help whether it be just straight up powerful stuff or specifically helps to deal with pesky foes like ghouls. Because there are different sections to the grinding with different strategies to doing it efficiently, I’ll leave the specifics out since they get a little spoiler-y in case you want to figure it out on your own. But, do let me know if you’d like me to reply with specific strategies that may be seen as too much of a walkthrough or too spoilery for some (they don’t seem like gigantic story spoilers or anything so if the grinding gets too tedious and you stop having fun, they might be worth knowing about).

Should I be killing these innocents I see on the street? I try to get shadow runs but they seemingly always involve killing ghouls, which bend me over and spank my samurai butt. I’ve put my morals on hold and have been tediously murdering the population for the little nuyen and items they have.

Luckily the Karma explanation section on the Shadowrun strategywiki actually explains this pretty well. I went through it and it looks like a straight up explanation without story spoilers so I feel comfortable just linking it here for you: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Shadowrun_(Sega_Genesis)/Karma#Karma

-is the samurai class the all-rounder character or should I just restart as a shaman or netrunner?

I found a really good explanation on the Shadowrun wiki: https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Shadowrun_(Sega)/Archetype. Thankfully this also gives a much needed explanation of the differences between classes without spoilers. It seems like this info is very important to know upfront depending on what your playstyle is like.

As far as the game itself, I did not play the genesis version but definitely looked into it after I got the Shadowrun trilogy that GOG games gave out for free a few years back. From what I found, the Sega Genesis version is superior to the SNES version in a few ways but a lot of people enjoyed both. I really like the style and concepts presented in the series and the newer Shadowrun trilogy seems to have taken all of that and improved on it, with each game getting better and better at giving the experience intended. I’d say it’s worth taking a look at if you enjoy the Genesis game, or if you really like the elements of the Genesis game but aren’t enjoying it so much, the newer series might be what you’re looking for.

Edit: Spelling, grammar and formatting.

Edit 2: Also, here is a link to a PDF of the original game manual for the Sega Genesis version, which helps navigate the UI and buttons, etc., just in case you need it since manuals were kind of a big deal back in the day!

The person reacting to your comment calling them a pigeon:

Any recommendations for reliable storage? I need new drives but I’ve put off buying any for years with all the bad reviews and counterfeit products making me weary of any deal that seems too reasonable or model with known issues.

Ah now I see it, thank you!

I might sound like an idiot but what is the thing in the center of the photo used in this article? At first I thought it was someone in a black robe and black veil making their case to the council which upon closer inspection can’t be true, then looking closer it looks like a filled trash bag in the middle of the council which makes even less sense.

What am I looking at here?

I just did it and it worked! It’s definitely a jumble of music files but it’s all there, every last bit. Thank you, thank you so much. This has been weighing on my mind for so long, there are so many songs I can put back on my offline playlists now that I have them again. You’re the best!

I used Google Play Music for purchases/online music locker and loved it. I eventually became that idiot that never downloaded all their purchases before the switch to Youtube Music happened.

Now I can’t even open Youtube Music because it loads up my GPM library and rubs in my face that I essentially paid to have a bunch of music pre-listed for streaming that now has unskippable ads that I can’t listen to unless I leave my screen on and unlocked.

I was too broke and slammed to get a new external drive in order to get all my music downloaded and saved from GPM at the time of the switch, but I look back on it and think about how I could’ve skipped meals and stuff to have gotten something with just enough space to save that music.

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Disco Elysium is a fantastic one. There are an insane amount of choices that shape how you go about the investigation of the hanged man and ultimately what happens beyond that investigation. Choices of who to side with, how to side (openly or playing multiple sides, etc.), choices that ultimately define what kind of detective you are (by-the-book boring, superstar douchebag, violent tough guy, Sherlock Holmes-esque genius, etc., including my favorite: Twin Peaks Lynchian detective that bases their decisions off of dreams, intuition and imaginary conversations with the dead body), and even how failing or succeeding at something can lead to progress in very different ways. If you fail to hit that person you tried to punch, or miss that shot with your gun, or utterly fail to convince someone to help you, you progress through in very different ways so that failing your way to the truth is just as satisfying and entertaining as succeeding your checks to get there.

And of course Fallout: New Vegas. Whether you choose to support the New California Republic, Caesar’s Legion, Mr. House, or a truly independent New Vegas, none of them are perfect. Each succeeds in an ideal society in some ways but completely fails at others, leaving you to decide which imperfect system you feel is the right one for the world instead of shoving an obvious answer in your face.

I had this same thought when I started playing games again but found out what you mentioned, which is that the Intel integrated graphics processor was just not having it. I remember having the money back in 2013 to go dedicated but since I wasn’t gaming at that time I said “nah it’ll just distract me into wanting to play games again.” Five years later I get back into it with massive disappointment in my past decision.

I do only play for about an hour or two so I really like the free version of GeForce for helping limit it to that (or at least forcing me to take a break and get up and walk around every hour when I do swap out sleep for more playtime). There’s been a couple times I’ve thought about getting GamePass for a month and smashing through a couple games but I know I can’t trust myself to play that much right now and will end up just paying for another subscription service but not using it often like a schmuck.

But Alternate option B…my goodness have I been eyeing that Steam Deck. I usually try to save five or 10 bucks or so here and there to build up for “fun stuff” and I’ve wondered if I could build it up long enough for one. I think you’ve just inspired me to make that a goal, or at the very least cut that into two separate batches so I still can do fun stuff or buy a cheap game on sale every now and then while still building up a Steam Deck fund.

I’m on a 2013 Macbook Pro so it’s not just potato city but potato city in MacOS country. I run a decent amount of games but Firewatch was about the most it could handle and it wasn’t exactly a smooth experience. Even something as low-demanding as SOMA is all just stutters and choppy frames moving in slow motion at the lowest settings. Bootcamp was pretty much just taking up space because of that.

With GeForce Now I’m actually playing games I wouldn’t have even thought about otherwise (just got 100% on Jedi: Fallen Order the other week and it all looked and ran beautifully). For me it makes it so I can actually run the games, plus they actually look really good, plus it means I can play those “Windows only” games without having to take up space with bootcamp (which again, would struggle immensely with something like Sunset).

Obviously I’d love better hardware but being able to hop on GeForce for free for an hour to play a game I picked up for a few bucks is a much more reasonable option until I get a lot more money.

It’s never explicitly explained, with the most being the other characters saying that they don’t think he’s ever seen the movie Gattaca and doesn’t know what it’s about, and Rafi later confirming he had no idea it was a movie.

Since Rafi’s character is defined by being as uninformed, devoid of all decency, and chaotic as possible, I think that it completely fits though. Especially since most of his lines are improvised by Mantzoukas, who would be clever enough to use a similar-sounding movie title in place of an actual event for Rafi’s character. Adding to that, there is another scene in later seasons where Rafi is getting kicked out of a store and he says that they’ll have to call in the police and the FBI to get him out of there, again shouting “Gattaca” which definitely plays into your theory.

If anyone gets the chance to ask Jason Mantzoukas a question, this is the one to ask about! Until then, I think this just became my headcanon. GATTACA!

If they’d opt-in to GeForce Now I would buy this on Steam in an instant.

I don’t use it very often but I misuse the word “Gattaca” on purpose sometimes. In reality it’s the title of the 1997 film that’s named from the letters G,A,T, and C, referring to guanine, adenin, thymine and cytosine, the four nucleobases of DNA.

But on the TV show The League, the character Rafi (Jason Mantzoukas) screams it as his battle cry during paintball, completely oblivious to what it actually means or that it’s the title of a movie. I urge you all to misuse this word at some point as well – if you ever need to hype yourself up, try screaming “GATTACA!” as your battle cry!

When it sunk it that reversing time was more than just a clever puzzle mechanic, I did a lot of self reflecting.

If you haven’t checked it out, I highly suggest the game Disco Elysium. It’s similar in that the more beautifully-written context you learn about, the more it transcends the plot and explores the themes. You can check out a playthrough of the first parts of gameplay to get a taste of its writing style but it continues to evolve as you level up the voices of your own conscience to the point of genuine wisdom or sheer madness (or leave them oblivious which is also fun).

Holy freakin moley I never knew this, that means I might be able to give it a shot on my mac sometime even without this new port. For anyone else as unfortunate as me that’s gaming on an old mac, I found the tutorial for how to set this up by Eggyhead.