Daggot

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.

I've seen this done on some of the retro restore youtube channels. The other method is the dishwasher. Surprisingly effective.

I would LOVE to see a detailed Harvard Business Review case on Sega and its downfall. There are several documentaries that cover a number of the terrible decisions, bad/poor timing etc, but to what extent within the company where there just terrible leaders or people with their own convoluted agendas that lead to the downfall of the company?

I was kinda expecting something near the end of the article where it was realized they could do xxx cool thing because of this. But, no. I get to a coder/hacker this is very cool. I'm sure there's some way to manipulate this further for different purposes/effects, etc.

I still remember a Future Crew coder saying "what you see on screen isn't necessarily what's in the frame buffer". That kinda blew my mind, to think you could have a desired effect with out the buffer being in sync, and how you would keep it in sync for what you were trying to do. Those guys were way ahead of their time.

I'd totally forgotten about this game. I played it after Castle of Illusion since that was such a good game. OMG, not even close. yeesh. It's fun to see someone want to try to fix some of the problems. I don't think they'll be able to push it into the same magic of CoI. I like the comment above, "Mega CD version of Fantasia". Yeah. Such wasted potential with this license. But, in my experience back in the day Infogrammes was not usually high quality gaming.

@NinChocolate And they usually point to Pebble as an example of it working. I don't back much any more. Getting burn lasts for a good while. But, I've also adjusted my mentality on Kickstarter as a whole. You really can't look at it as pre-ordering, which is what most do. You're really investing in an idea, where you might get a copy of the finished good if the investment pays out. some of the games I've backed have been so meh, I don't even play more than 20min. But, I liked the idea. I guess I do it in hopes that their next idea will be better? Maybe I've be come a bit more of an optimist as I get older?

Dragon Quest day is a long known . . .eh, tradition? issue? for Japan. There are shades of truth on both sides if it was a real thing and the gov or Enix decided to do something about it. I've read stories and fact checking that kinda go both ways. There was certainly influence regardless of the matter-of fact reason behind it.

But, really, who cares? It's a great piece of social tribal knowledge and works better if we simply believe it was a thing. DQ is a great series that has done a lot to contribute to the genre, gaming in general and how a game spills over into other media, spin-offs, concerts, etc, etc, etc.

Oh, my, the era of super scaler games! Space Harrier and Thunder Blade are forever etched in my memories - but taking a quick glace a list of games I see there are more that are technically SS games than I realized. Quite a few I loved.

This is such an odd move though. I mean, cool? I guess. Will be super interesting to see what they do with modern hardware. Streets of Rage 4 is nothing like this, but it help show what a old school game can do on modern hardware, and it was EPIC. I guess I'm hoping we get a similar love letter kinda game like that, but for super scaler. Now I'm kinda pumped to see what they do!

I always wanted to play Shining Force. The action scenes were epic at the time. I never did get a chance though.

Just, ugh, come on Sega. You've got such LEGENDARY IP in your back catalog. You're sitting on a massive gold mind. Do something! I was really hoping the rumors about MS buying Sega might be true, only because you know MS would milk that back catalog for something. Some moves by Sega even kinda seemed like they were getting ready for a sale, but it never happened. BAH! I have little faith in the IP reboot they've mentioned. Seems too limited in scope.

Anyways, glad someone was able to preserve these classics. So sad it has to be this way though.

Look, this is the inevitable result of the raise of AI. It's a black box for the most part. YouTube probably really doesn't know why the AI decided it needed to be removed. You have to specifically design the system to determine a value and then the next system perform the action, not have the AI do both steps. I encountered this while talking to someone who worked with credit bureaus. They cannot have a fully automated system determine something about your credit w/o being able to state the why. Similarly here, the AI should be designed to generate the decisions and justification, record it, but then a second system perform the action. This way there is a log of what the decision was and why.

But, that is a more expensive solution than allowing the AI to do the whole process in one shot. It's also less accountable. The solution is to push for legislation for to require any/all automated decision systems to be required to record both the decision and the reasoning. It's a harder problem to solve for with AI, but not impossible. "Why did you give the famous person 6 fingers and only half a palm?" AI: "IDK, because yo' momma?" Then the world would see we're really not ready for AI to run so much of what we're allowing it to do.

Fun read. The speed was unbelievable back then. It blew my mind how it was able to go so fast, or at least convey the sense of speed so well. I guess I missed that the music made so much headway into the club scene. It was FF III on the SNES that opened the door for me about game music. I ordered the 3 CD set, and I still treasure that today. So, I was more aware of game music. Awesome that the music got such recognition.

Game ads have always been at odds. From the early days, the box art and ads never really matched the game, especially the really early days. But, that didn't really matter. It's odd how we relied so much on our imaginations based on those ads/art. I think we've lost some of that magic with everything being so realistic now, even the ads. AI could push us farther from that magic as well.

I got an email about this kickstarter yesterday. It has a really interesting look about it. The art style is almost like a Sierra adventure game, but with way smoother animation and obviously the two RPG style combat mechanics. I can appreciate the technical aspect of this game, which I think will help it feel more like a real new retro-style game. Despite all that positive stuff, it hasn't grabbed me. I'm fine with the price points on the backing levels, even if they are a little rich. Maybe it is the odd mix of Sierra style art design just messing with my head.

I may not be the only one since they haven't crushed their goal yet.

I feel the same other comments. Not sure Polymega is for me, but I like the concept here. Physical license ownership is the better way to go for sure. That price those. Ehhh. I mean, if you're really into it, then having those alternate version is probably the right way to do this. Seems like a rather niche audience though.

Still, I like the concept.

@sdelfin You put that very well. And ya, comparing them to more like a rhythm game makes sense to me too. I just want a game where you're an ultimate machine of destruction off to blowup the bad guys, aliens, whatever. It's cathartic.

@LowDefAl Ya, it's been several years since I dug into all that mess. I may need to re-watch the Secret Galaxy episodes that cover the whole thing.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCYSDJQezavKQNm6zCRKJ6Lur9cE-sfCY

@Servbot_EJ Oh that would totally suck if that's true. I hadn't really felt the need to do the region shop thing, but that might be the first one to get me to do it. Is that confirmed for the western release, or still speculation? Also, why would they remove the characters? Stupid licensing tomfoolery is to blame I assume.

Haven never played this, but looking at some YT videos, I think this is an impulse purchase for sure. Love these old style shoot 'em ups that aren't pure bullet hell. I've just never gravitated to the Cave style where the genre ended up at. I want the old style mass destruction games. This seems to fit that.

@LowDefAl i don't think HG owns the gaming rights. It's so convoluted though, I'm sure they don't even know. Glad to hear a lot of that has gotten untangled recently. Hopefully we can see most stuff released in the US. Eventually.

Wait, wait, wait. So back in '93 we had a game about 4 dudes that get isekai'd, given special powers, and are sent off to defeat some evil force? LOL '93 would be some serious OG isekai if they decided do an anime of the IP.

Never heard of this, but if it's from the Mystic Warrior team and hardware, should be worth a look.

@Daniel36 Impulse'd! Will fire it up later tonight.

The Steam reviews make me want to impulse buy this. It sounds wonderfully old school without being annoying because it's rather short and face-paced. That has high appeal. Love the chip-tune soundtrack in the video on Steam. Great vibes!

I've been saying for a while that Sega has been doing a poor job of utilizing its back catalog of legendary IP; especially from the arcade division. I'm at least mostly glad this guy kinda gets how Sega has more to be proud of and known for. That said, ya, other comments cover the concerns. There is real opportunity, but Sega is also infamous for missteps.

When the rumors kinda circulated the someone might buy Sega, I kinda hoped it might be MS. Not that MS would know exactly what to do with the legendary IP available, but they had money to explore it. However, after MS's buying spree we can see the really don't know how to utilize great IP at all. sigh.

The partnership with Dotemu for SoR4 was fantastic. I would love to see Golden Axe get the same love letter treatment, and other classic titles. It's clear Sega is going in a different direction though, and probably not for the better.

Sega used to do what Nintendon't, but Nintendo is firing on nearly all cylinders - with that Game "Freak" leak not withstanding. Serious, GF, what were you thinking even writing that stuff??????

This does present any interesting idea. What if SEGA partnered with Lego like Atari did for a few sets of classic IP. I loved that Atari 2600 on with the different cartridge themes. I wasn't able to buy it, but it was so awesome. I always say Sega has so many legendary IP in their back catalog, doing a collection of select IP in Lego would be brilliant.