Andee

@Bod2019 Ah that's cool (maybe it was the SNES version I was thinking of) — I remember SCE being £65 (but got a fiver off as a promotion in the shop) — but in terms of value for money, I don't think I played another Mega Drive game quite as much as it

@Bod2019 Yup — and while it was an impressive feat, the amount of content you got in the game (one car, three tracks — six if you count Mirror Mode), it's shockingly meagre for that amount of 1994 money.

I believe Super Street Fighter's RRP was £80 — I don't remember seeing it on sale, but I do remember Mean Machines citing the insane price as a negative, especially considering it was an iteration.

So, just "Dark", then?

@no_donatello I picked up a relatively cheap 360 primarily to play the Mass Effect trilogy, and there were a handful of XBLA exclusives that I discovered and enjoyed, but these days there seems to be zero draw to getting an XBox console when the majority of stuff I can get elsewhere (and Bethesda games leave me completely cold)

Yeah, I picked up a 32-inch Samsung on eBay for about £60 (RRP at the time was about £240) which has four HDMI, SCART, and Component, which is perfect for Wii/PS2 — granted it's not a massive screen or anything, but for retro consoles it's fantastic, lag free

@KitsuneNight Yeah, they lost me at "solder". I've got soul but I'm not a solderer.

@Diogmites Oh yeeeeah — I do remember making the switch to tank controls, as that just felt way more natural when approaching enemy areas, and quickly backing outta there when you realise you're outnumbered

@Diogmites It's certainly been a while, but from what I recall, in Desert Strike it wasn't turned on by default, but on Jungle Strike it was, and that's what turned me around on using it

@Diogmites Yeah I remember initially turning inertia off (I think I preferred the more digital feeling), but over time grew to embrace the more natural flow of having it turned on - especially when strafing.

Gameplay trailer looks bang-on — seems like they've really gone out of their way for a very faithful spiritual successor to the original

@Gamer_X They'd need a seriously unique USP to compete with The Big Three

@BetaRabbit64 Yeah! Hell damn fart!

@MeloMan Just be sure not to change the channel.

I wonder if the TV network exec who asked for the animators to round off Janine's glasses in The Real Ghostbusters (because they feared that kids might be scared of her pointed frames) used to work for McDs. Were they traumatised by a particularly acute dorito in their youth?

@Spider-Kev Yeah, considering there were only five of them, a collection would be awesome

Desert/Jungle Strike were such a sublime pairing — man, Electronic Arts used to really knock it out of the part, didn't they?

Wow, LRG are on a roll lately aren't they?

The version that's on Switch is playable, but it could use a good tidy up — the refresh rate is super choppy and the resolution is inconsistent across sprites and backgrounds

"Sometimes po-faced and pretentious, always with a heightened sense of its own importance" — it tracks that The Guardian put at number 1, then.

I'm eternally grateful that's not the design Nintendo went with.

in fact, it appeared there first before the game was released

I forget where I read this, but wasn't the story that Mean Machines commissioned Weston to do the cover specially for the mag, and then when Sega saw what he'd done, they were so impressed that they asked if they could use it for the UK version of the game?

Yet another reason why region locking needs to go straight in the bin

Man, Sega of America really had an aversion to using anything with the word "Mega" in their consoles and add-ons, didn't they?

@RetroGames Yeah, maybe not at the time (Sega really should have been focusing on the Saturn), but an all-in-one Mega Drive/CD/32X would be a really neat device to have sitting on one's retro gaming shelf!

As someone who was foaming-at-the-mouth desperate to see Final Fight come to the Mega Drive, I find it intriguing that they renamed the game "Last Battle" in the west. Whether that was intentional, or just a coincidence, kid-me was ALMOST duped into considering getting it, even though in my heart of hearts I knew it was meant to be rubbish. Glad I never did.

My favourite Street Fighter comic is still the Masaomi Kanzaki series from the mid '90s — it only features the original 12 characters, but it had a very focused plot, and a really crisp, expressive art style - I find most of the current UDON comics look a little too pristine and shiny

@Chocoburger I recently discovered that game just before the 3DS eShop closed — it's so much fun isn't it?

Looking at the level of realism/violence in games from that era is positively quaint. I wonder what his reaction was after seeing the insanely-detailed body horror of the more recent MK games.

Limited Run? More like Flimflam-ited Bum

Those first two Zelda games are crying out for a 16-bit style remake

Love me some Katamari — has to be one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in a videogame, and have listened
to it constantly. Plus I'm so chuffed they re-released the original as we never originally got it in the UK.

@somnambulance I only finally got around to playing Wattam a few months ago — it's such a fun little diversion isn't it?

Maligned schmaligned, Street Fighter is an absolute hoot

The good news is that the movie is currently free to view on YouTube's Movies & TV channel, but only in the US.

Quick! Change the channel!

Incredibly, the ants agreed and duly removed all of the larvae to the new location – effectively cleaning up the controller as they went.

Thanks, ants. Thants.

If it's offensively bad, like Bubsy 3D, then yes.

@BulkSlash Yeah, it's much better than the aural massacre from the original game

@RetroGames They apparently tried something in 2004, but it never got picked up — I think the technology wasn't really there yet

https://www.knightmare.com/series/knightmare-vr

Oof! Hope they fix that refresh rate.

Now please bring the series out on modern consoles!

@JayJ as well it should!

I'm a little column A/B

Videogames have been a constant ever since I was about 4, so like with any song/book/movie there are gonna be unavoidable emotional connections to a period of my life, but I can chart that feeling to as recently as last year.

With consoles I definitely have a fondness for games that were designed around their inherent limitations and have always found it fascinating. For actual nostalgia though I'd say I lean more into arcade games, as that's something I simply don't do as often as I used to.

OutRun 2: "Hold my beer"

Resident Evil 2? Heck yeah

"in fact, it's still going strong even today, with 2023 marking the 35th season of the show."

Well, it's still going; "strong" might be debatable, though...

@Ristar24 Yeah, I absolutely cleaned up in there with all the (then reasonably-priced) DS and GBA games that were absolutely flooding the basement level of Game Focus. They even had a modded Saturn on display near the counter that I really shouldn't have hesitated to pick up before they eventually shuttered...

So that's why we've never seen it pop up on many retro collections — kind of like Sonic 3 in that regard.

I really felt that the series hit a massive peak with Wip3out — Fusion felt (rather like Angel of Darkness, as mentioned above), that they were basically starting from scratch with a whole new engine that not everyone was familiar or comfortable working with, and it really suffered from that. The Omega collection felt like a fine return to form, but Fusion really dinged my love for the series for a good long while, especially after how sublime I felt 3 was.

I'm sure if her children were raking millions in from eSports or Twitch sponsorships she wouldn't be so flippant as to what constitutes "life goals" - prat.

@Daze_of_Reality in hindsight, Alpha 1 always felt like a glorified demo of what Alpha 2 ended up becoming, so it was good that they went straight to it without charging punters twice, but I'm still astonished they managed to get it on the SNES at all (plus i didn't even find out it existed until the late '00s)

@Zenszulu I distinctly remember him being introduced to Mean Machines way back when — it's bonkers how he's still a regular weekly fixture in my gaming journalism absorption with DF Direct.

@gojiguy The graphics on the first game I don't think actually look that bad — it always had a slightly quirky proto-HD-2D look to it (although saying that, HD-2D has never really sat quite right with me), but I think having it be portable, and the japanese language option, might just tip it for me.

@gojiguy I've been on the fence about picking up the HD remaster of this — I read it released with some pretty noticable porting flaws. I'm assuming they were never ironed out?

@ralphdibny What a rip!