Daggot

I assume they hired some short term contractors to fill some gaps and those are counted in the layoffs. Otherwise, ya the numbers don't add up to what the article mentions.

Oh this looks like so much fun. Added to my list of future backlog games.

If you've been following his channel for a while, I believe he's telegraphed his intentions for a while. Given the user mods he's covered, his comments in recent videos, etc, to me it seems the first goal will be to elevate some popular user mods to 1st party. Allow them to apply for the Commodore brand, bring their QA up to a set standard, maybe even have help with manufacturing and certainly help with marketing. That's the low hanging fruit.

I expect there will be some crossover product development with the Commander X16 crew. That seems like the next lower fruit to be had. Same community, similar base tech, etc. What this would actually end up being since they already have the X16, my guess would be a revised product with the Commodore license. One things he and 8-Bit guy has stated multiple times was how the Vic 20 and C64 came with think user manuals that taught how use the machine, how to code some simple things like a sprite on the screen, music, etc. Having the resources and branding for a follow-up machine to focus on and fulfill that kind of ideal could be interesting.

The key limiter will be funding for R&D, which is why he's leading with licensing deal for the retro community. Allow them to do the R&D for mods and add-ons for the base system. Get that cash cycle going so they can invest into product development. Having gone through the X16, they have a good idea of what that involves to plan for any new 1st party product, so like what was mentioned above about expanding the AGA architecture. Personally, I've always wondered what the evolution of the Amiga would have been. Would it have fallen into the same GPU convention as the PC did? What would the sound capabilities have been, especially given how sound chips are all but forgotten about as just a part of the motherboard and purely commodity. Most of these questions and concepts end up back at the X16 in my head. It's laid so much of the ground work for these kinds of ideas.

Would I invest? No. Oh, I'll buy a bit of merch, a cool tshirt, etc. sure. But, investing needs to stay with the professionals and not the community.

I guess my post didn't go through. They did a near stealth patch a while back to make the game compatible with Win10 on Steam. I need to go back and give it a try.

I tried Golden Axe Classics. Meh. The virtual controls left a lot to be desired. Not even haptics so I missed a lot of button press timing. Maybe with a controller it might be decent. But, I hear the emulation is not great. Maybe Shining Force would do better since it doesn't need fast reflex button mashing.

Hadn't found this creator before, but I do like his energy. But, WHOA, this is a great story. Love the theme song. Going to need to check out this guy's content. Probably need to add Yuzo's channel too. Never thought to go look for game music composers.

He's got an Adam Savage quality that helps his presentation style.

@slider1983 Agreed. But, ya they aren't going to sell it through a competing digital store front. I assume the game requires the Battlenet client to run, which I'm sure Bliz and Steam haven't come to an agreement on terms.

I have found memories of this game. I really enjoyed it, but I also remember thinking none of my friends would like it because it wasn't an action platformer.

@slider1983 This happened after Bliz started trying to revive some older games.

I remember this. Never got one as a kid. Even back then I remember thinking you should be able to hack the concept by making your own barcodes. I never have seen a guide showing if the numbers off a barcode translated directly to stats so you could write out a perfect character. That was my thinking as a kid. But, even back then, the appeal of just scanning the barcode off of everything hoping to get lucky to find an S rank fighter was pretty slick.

In a very high level concept, it's a very crude form of collectable card battling that became Pokeman and the like. Although the randomness of your deck being based on what you had off packages at home is comical; though about the same as the randomness of what's in a booster pack.

@JackGYarwood The Shogo sequel became NOLF? huh. In a weird way ya I can kinda see that. Too bad mech based games are just not popular anymore. There's little chance of another dev wanting to trying a game in that kind of setting. I don't imagine there's much mech game development going on in Japan either outside of shooters, and certainly not FPS. LOL

What a nice read. I'm sad that I didn't know about this game. Never even seen any images of it before this article. Looks like something I would have really enjoyed.

On the topic of Monolith games that don't get enough attention, Shogo still ranks near the top for me. It wasn't a great game. It was fun, and tried something different with a heavy influence of mech anime. My gaming group at the time had a blast doing beta testing for multiplayer - one guy found so many holes in the maps to fall through. I expect sales were disappointing so there was never talk of a sequel. But, given how mainstream anime has gotten, although not mech anime as much these days, I kept hoping someone would make an attempt to restart the IP. Now, that's just never going to happen.

I can kind of understand people having a reaction. It falls into that balance of motion, smoothness, visual queues, etc. Thankfully they didn't try to ad head bob back then. Now we know about various "tricks" to help with motion.

I never played this. Too bad, younger me would have been all over this kind of game. I've tried to go back to some older 1st person crawlers like this; naming Dungeon Hack after watching Pro Jared do a few videos on it. I think nostalgia is ruining what I keep hoping the experience should be. I have memories of being sucked into games like Dungeon Master on the Amiga with it's fantastic sound design; making you feel like you were there. I hoped maybe a crawler on the Quest 2 would do the trick, but those all want you to flail around too much; although Ancient Dungeon was still a good game - just didn't scratch this specific itch. But, love the look of this. Maybe I need to try it.

The pixel art is solid. The in-game 3D stuff needs more style. But, I love the idea behind this. Wishlisted.

@heligo Took my brain a moment when I got to the 3rd line to realize it was that song. Now it's going to stick all day long.

The amount of drawn detail in that header image is bonkers. My eye has no idea where to start when looking at it. It's one of those images you can spend days looking over trying to find everything going on.

I've never heard of this game, but the design of the main ship looks a bit like Thexder.

2025 is really shaping up to be a golden year for retro and retro-style games. This looks promising. I remember this game, but I don't remember if I actually played it much. There are other games from this era I'd love to see get a remaster.

@N64-ROX I was thinking the exact same thing. Almost looks like an early Sid Meier game.

@N64-ROX I was being largely sarcastic. The "think of the shareholders" bit should have given it away. I can see how AI would benefit some dev time, but even with prompts it is a different skill set that has to be developed for the producer/designer to get what they want. It might prove that better writing skills for prompts, being able to describe what you want the AI to do might prove to be a more important skill. I've seen prompts that are multiple paragraphs in length. Would it be using word to describe a storyboard frame? that might almost take longer depending if you need very exact details. anyways, I have mixed opinions and concerns about AI in general.

Oh boy. About to fully date myself here. I used to work at a Waldensoftware store waaaay back. Most of you probably don't know that name. It was a spinoff of Waldenbooks, which if you're not old enough think of that was pre B&N. Anyways, worked at a software store during the era of these boxes. The non-standard boxes, yeah they stood out from the crowd. TOTAL PAIN to manage them on the shelf. I kinda doubt corporate ever paid attention to this stuff. There were some boxes that just wouldn't even stand on their own; you had to lean them. The worst were the ones that didn't have a flat front. I kinda miss the design of big boxes, but also don't miss having to manage them on the shelf. If anything, I really miss the art on the boxes. The original Atari 2600 game boxes are masterclass in box art. Digital has killed box art across all media. It's also killed pack-ins like mini comics, cloth maps, etc. sigh.

Several thoughts ran through my head reading this. Super interesting to say the least. But, I'm curious how this came to be. I don't imagine there is a high number of Atari+ systems in circulation. There probably isn't enough critical mass numbers for Toaplan to approach Atari for this. Would license make money? I mean, I love this idea and the video looks like the game would be fun. Can it make enough money for this to happen again? I'm not so sure.

Would this get a Steam release so it's available to a wider audience? Or, is the game engine something they can reuse the code base on other platform? Stuff like that would make more sense for the development effort.

Some times the AF jokes that require a good bit of setup are the ones we really wish were real. These "mockups" look great. I've been itching to go back into the IP lately. I haven't picked up the collection that released last year. Probably time to grab it on the next sale and relive some of the better titles. I didn't play this one on the GB, but it's curious how many of the Castlevania title are known for their soundtracks. It is one of the series that I still hit up a mix on youtube of some of the key title tracks.

Did he ever comment on how long it actually took him to do the screen images?

i never explored what the demoscene might have done after the 500. This could be really interesting. I guess I could do this now with the emulator. huh, never thought about it. hmm

Looking at the Steam page, it doesn't say these have autoplay where you can just watch the whole animation w/o having to play. Dragon's Lair has this. I assume this feature is there, just not in the config screen.

I'm really torn on these. I never played them, but it's also the kind of game you play a few times, watch the whole thing to see the restored video quality, and that's about it. Will I actually pick them up? not sure. Maybe on a sale.

Would I want a 4k 60fps upscale of Dragon's Lair? hmmm

@Sketcz The label appears to say Sky News. I assume some story covering the company. I kinda doubt it was game specific.

@bring_on_branstons Agreed on both of those. i spent countless hours more on the PS1 game than all other RR games combined. Maybe it was just closer to an arcade experience than the later games. A perfect port of the original arcade game would be so fun.

Super tough question. Like earlier comments, you could go with something really early like Pong or Space Invader. Or Space War and I'm drawing a blank on the first text based game. I'm also thinking like Mystery House changed how we thought about graphics in video games. Some of these influences were more revolutionary and shorter lived vs some that had a long ripples but maybe not as popular.

Think I might go with Mystery House. It pushed graphics as well as game narrative. Plus was the springboard of what Sierra later did to push early gaming technology before Carmack.

Dang, I was ready to watch a full playthrough. The art, the music, everything was sucking me in. It was like watching Ultima III style, but with modern features.

The monitors alone are worth the money. Yes, you have to deal with the cab, but those monitors will be gold before too long.

@Sketcz Should be possible with the right coding. Even the camera thing might work. You'd be surprised how well barcodes hold up. They're usually a minimal size for that reason of easy to read in various environments and materials. QR is even better, and could be possible as well, but that would take a whole rewrite of the SDK I assume.

I kinda like the idea here. For classic text adventures like Zork, I assume you would change the UI to be joypad driven. Not impossible given the advancements in pick-and-click UI.

I think the real magic might be in the choose your own adventure side and especially the book RPG stuff. I never actually had any of those books. I picked up an app a few years back that let you play these kind of adventures. It's kinda like choose your own adventure, but you had combat and you had to track the stats yourself. Could very easily see this being the hardware platform of choice for that kind of experience. Really anything that's text heavy.

The price is going to be the killer point though. Great that they already plan to release the SDK to make it very indie friendly. But, the adoption will be nil if the hardware price isn't low. Not sure I would back this, but I like the concept.

@RupeeClock This should have any issues. He's coming up with his own designs. As long as there isn't a patent related to the PCB there shouldn't be an issue. Since producing a working unit would require you to provide your own chips, he's not running into most legal issues.

Granted, if this was Nintendo they would still "Release the hounds" on him. But really he's providing a repair solution not circumventing anything other than parts that are no longer available.

They're trying to figure out how to do this with AI and far less humans. Same thing as all studios which is why we have such a high layoff rate lately. AI will make our games going forward. We as gamers, must really begin to think of the shareholders. Once we have a general AI that can come up with its own ideas for games, shareholders should be able to have a company with no humans. That's how they will increase their stock value! Then we just need an AI to replace the board of directors so the shareholders don't have to deal with that layer of management.</extreme sarcasm>

Does the market want this? I don't think I do. But, I assume they have data showing that people are playing the Space Invaders giant game so they feel the market will take this too. Maybe the younger crowd want it.

On the one hand this is great because it preserves the original hardware. Unless you go FGPA it's the best way to enjoy games especially on physical media. But, you can't get around the bulk. Could you reduce the space from the device and slim it down? It's been done on other system with some fancy PCB hacking and such. It might not work well here since they already shrank a full console down. It might require chip replacement to go smaller, or go FPGA and a custom solution.

Still, I can appreciate the work put in here to keep this specific platform alive. I wanted that TGX tv thing since the cards were more travel friendly than a larger cart.

Jumping Flash! OMG, I hadn't thought about that game in decades. What a blast from the past.

@PinballBuzzbro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcvFkkCxts8

This looks really good. If they can deliver the same polish as SoR4, that will be awesome. I still play SoR4 off and on. It's such a great game. I gotta make sure my newsfeed is keeping an eye on this one.

THIS! This is how it's supposed to be. A dev considers a project, doesn't believe they would do it justice; which I translate to mean they didn't feel they had a good approach or fresh take to bring to the table, and so they pass. Not just a cash grab to make some crap game on name recognition alone.

Shinobi title, eh? <insert Fry gif here>

I know this is a far off idea, but I kinda wish there was a way to rent these things. I don't mind $50 for something like this, but I don't have the space to collect stuff. I'd love to play with all of these titles (all of the retro/mini stuff), but I know I would only play them a few times and then put them on a shelf; which I don't have room for. Let me rent one for a month and send it back. That scratches the itch, prevent clutter and someone makes some money off it. The trick is dealing with the inevitable damage from being handled by all sorts, and from shipping mishaps. Or, I need to press one of my single friends to collect this stuff and I just go over there for a game night.

From the pic, I totally get how you might think it could be a PS2. There is visual similarity. I like the idea of the box. It's something I've wished there was a better approach for. But, the thing needs to address the other issue of ports. Samsung has made the marketing decision to restrict the # of ports based on the class of TV. There's no technical reason to do this. My old 1080p HD TV w/o ARC is a 6000 series, so def lower end, but it has 4 hdmi ports. So much easier to connect multiple devices/consoles to than my newer tv. Now, unless you can spend >$1k, you're stuck with 1 e/ARC channel and 1 input for a console and that's it. That is not progress. That's share holder value at work.

There are other sites besides YouTube to host videos. They just aren't nearly as popular. One big issue for game trailers has been YT's aggressive use of compression and low bitrate. Too much compression and low bit rate can make game trailers look worse than they should. Most people will say it's fine, but there are quite a few videos showing that it doesn't take much for detail to get lost to either compression or low bit rate; especially particle effects. This isn't the same thing as what the article is talking about. I'm just saying it does feel like there could be a rise of a competing platform for gaming. I kinda doubt it will happen given the challenges to get scale and volume of visitors needed to make it really work against YT. But, you never know what technology will make possible to help lower the barrier of entry to make is more possible for a competing product to challenge part of the market.

YES to the light gun game collection. That would be HUGE.

I love this idea. This expands so easily so you could build out a display shelf of your most loved retro games; have the figures on display and the one you're playing is on the stage. That's awesome.

Take note though, this from the website:
Tapto NFC tags are shipped blank and need to be programmed with your choice of game (using your reader).

I was wondering if it would be a just a token to trigger your emulator to load whichever game is configured to respond to that token, or if it was meant for the game to be stored on the figure. Seems you need to load the game to the figure.

Great article! I never knew about this. I would have bought this on the spot had I known about it. The tech, ideas and talent on display here are impressive. I'd be super curious to know if DE reused any of this for later projects, maybe even on other platforms.

That's awesome.

@wiiware very good point about probably no IAP nonsense. That's the bane of mobile games for me.

@KitsuneNight That's kinda what I was wondering. When I looked at the Slipheed release, those graphics were, let's just say sub-par.

@shiningpikablu252 Hmm. So it would have to be the V2 mode I see on Wikipedia. Thx.

What variant of the PC-88 are those screenshots from? I'm not overly familiar with the NEC systems. Those screens look pretty good for pre-VGA. Wikipedia shows a buncha variants of systems and 4 different display modes. I'm surprised to see some able to use 64k (65k?) colors. Can't tell for sure, but hose V3 specs might pre-date the wide release of VGA on the PC.

Most certainly not an 'Easter Egg" in the usual sense. Looks more like the background artist was a fan of the Akira series and just put in a kind of homage. Good for him. We shouldn't be afraid to acknowledge sources that give us inspiration. Film directors do this all the time. Coincidently, they do it often to another "Akira" - Akira Kurosawa. <groan - ya, we see what you did there>

From the game page:

Recommended:
A1200 (HDD) +FastRam and Accelerator (for optimal framerate)

Not surprised. The media access speed for the FMV and storage would be a challenge for an A500.

That combat looks tedious. Also reminds me of something I can't put my finger on. Some older rpg that's not coming to mind.