Daggot

I would just love to see Roberta Williams make a new game on a new IP. She really did push storytelling concepts and capabilities within early video games. I don't think enough credit is given to her in how she handled UI, character interaction and even dialog that laid the foundation of what is now common standards in how games work.

I think I would most welcome her to do another mystery series. I really enjoyed The Colonel's Bequest and always hoped that would turn into a series. Laura Bow was good too, but I remember liking the earlier CB game better. It's been decades since I've played any of them. My point is, I think a mystery series would give her a lot of canvas to design and tell a wonderful story with interesting characters and unique set pieces. I hope she decides to return to form. I'm fine if she leaves KQ behind. It stands tall, and she has plenty of energy to start anew.

Cancelled? Ya, not sus at all.

Or, maybe it was called out for not being a working prototype and that being made clear in the listing.

@smoreon It would be pretty sweet, but I get from a marketing POV it has to make sense. While working through the Karateka one, I did wonder if might have made sense to combined it with Prince of Persia; which was also highly influential in its own right. But, they might have felt that was too much content for what they wanted to charge. And, that's where the concept might struggle on some of the things you mentioned. They have to balance dev time/content with a price point, which is almost certainly have to content with license costs. That's a huge SIGH right there because you know that'll kill most of them from ever even getting past the idea stage.

I loved the Sega version so much. I would bounce between this and Super Puzzle Fighter all the time. Wonder if there are any licensing issue that might keep this from making the rounds on various platforms.

@GeneJacket That's probably true. But, as long as they hold the rights to the IP and assets it's not "dead dead".

@Zeebor15 I saw that, but they may not hold the rights to everything given the publishers listed.

@GeneJacket Ya, had read that. But, seems like it only means the publisher backed out. Could still release as an - man, what do we call stuff like Streets of Rage 4 and TMNT that are considered "indie" but are closer to AAA in production quality? I'll stick with "indie" for now, so release as a AA indie title and revitalize the genre like how SoR4 has. I would be all over that. Hopefully they can nail the feel.

@Zeebor15 Really? Where do you see that? Super curious what they have control of.

@smoreon I hope the Gold Series stuff like the Making of Karatera is doing well enough for that kind of treatment to continue. I'm all for a robust package even if it's not a mass collection. Let me dig in and understand what went into our classics. Preserve what it took to make them special, not just slap emulated shovelware into a bundle.

The video looks great. I am definitely in the camp that's been wanting a return/reboot of the SSX games. I even dragged out my PS2 so my kids could play the original games. Hopefully this game makes to launch. I'd love to see an SSX game with modern graphics and high frame rates.

But, let's also keep up some coverage of Project Gravity, please. Been wanting to know what's happening there.

@Zeebor15 Do you mean like original or owned IP? Same, only Aleste that I'm aware of. Mostly they do contract work I believe; which isn't a bad thing.

I was a sad time indeed. I had a friend that bought the CD32 just after it launched. He had some interesting ideas on how to use the tech for non-gaming uses (this was 90s mind you). Just sad to have seen it go back then.

But, looking back now, I do wonder if they really could have competed in the end against the standardization of the PC platform. The only context we have is the Mac, and even it went through an era of mirroring the PC platform. So, extrapolate the Amiga, and it would have had to follow a similar path like Mac. General off the shelf cpu, with dedicated chips (?) except with an actual focus on gaming. Ya, that's an interesting though experiment. Would the Amiga basically have been the Mac, where it supported creative development, except it actually supported gaming? Hmm. What would that have done to PC Master Race as the Amiga would have had an established audience that the PC would take a decade to build. Something to noodle over.

I can't make up my mind if I want to back this or not. I'm kinda at my limit for backing games right now. I didn't play a ton of original game back in the DOS days, but I have some memories of it. Is that enough for me to pitch in for others to relive a bit of the glory? Maybe. But, would I actually sit and play it? Undecided.

Still, I love that they're trying to bring the concept into a modern presentation. Hopefully they have the right balance.

@AeonicB For sure it wouldn't have looked as good as what we got on the PS2. I assume it would be between that and like FFVII on PS1. Maybe.

I wonder if this will eventually play out like how film preservation did. Originally studios just didn't care. It wasn't until many years later that collectors and preservationists starting doing the work for the studios. The studios hated that individual owners had control of their prints, but eventually came to see the light about why to preserve film. Film wanted to be taken serious as a form of art. Art is to be preserved. So, you should preserve that as a form of art, especially the early works, the ones that pushed innovation, inspire, etc. This is exactly what video games are going through. And, we've already seen modern examples of studios, or worse, publishers, not taking care of assets from early games. Things get lost. For games, much like movies, there are a LOT of assets to be preserved - scripts, layout, storyboards, art boards, character sheets, much that overlays with games. So, it's possible we might see studios come around. The difference might be how each studio decides to participate. I say studio, but in the end it'll be whoever holds the license rights; so probably the publisher (bleh). That'll be the challenge. Publishers will only do it for money rather than to preserve the art. You'd think that Electronics "ARTS" might care given how they were originally formed, but I wouldn't take any bet on that. Double so for any publisher that pushes for live service micro transactions, etc.

@NinChocolate I've thought about this too. Waaay back when it was talked about how the GBA might be a controller for the ... <headscratch> was it the GameCube ? In back of my memory I remember there was supposed to some kind of connection option like this.

If was a kid with access to open source code like TR or DOOm, etc. Man, I can't imagine what wild stuff I would try to hammer out. Not to make my own game, but just to see how I could manipulate or push the technology/hardware. If now teen me grew along a similar path as now adult me did, I half wonder if I might have ended up working on game engine team.

That's some great example video. To get the super scaler effect on the ST and to run @ 50fps is some fine coding work for sure. Hopefully he can keep that target as he adds features. Curious what kind of technique he's using to achieve this at 8mhz.

I guess I'm just super partial to the Arkham trilogy. For sure since they were able to cast Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamhill it just felt like an interactive version of TAS. Feature-wise this looks good. Maybe not enough time has passed since Arkham for me not to expect a Batman game to have the same feel? not sure.

Oh wait, ya they even managed to cast Arleen Sorkin as Harley. PERFECT casting. I mean, the bar just doesn't get any higher for any game to follow for an established IP and version of that IP.

Hopefully the concepts aren't dead and may resurface in another game, Batman or not.

I hope this will play like Super Sprint; which I believe Atari still owns the IP. I loved that game as well as the Super Off Road. No clue how this will play w/o the arcade wheel though. But, if this reasonably priced, I'll give it a shot. I'm finding that I want more bite sized gaming than long involved games with tons of systems to have to balance and invest endless amount of time to learn and master.

Separate legal entity. Okay, the chart from the link explains what I was going to ask. So, it's a subsidiary. I keep wondering if they're setting up for a sale to MS. Moving all the physical stuff into a separate legal entity makes it nice and tidy to split off so MS would only buy Sega Corp, and Sammy Holdings I assume would dissolve unless it has separate IP holdings.

Buuuut, could be this really is just a financial move and not prep to sell. I hope the game development side is able to refocus and revitalize.

@Hexapus Now that you mention it, I had a similar initial reaction like that too. "Is this the right game?" Jumps in art direction and all.

I know 3 gets a lot of love in these, but I have a really soft spot for Revenge of Shinobi. It was a system seller to me for the Genesis. I played so much of it; especially the earlier levels LOL. It just had an edge that was very different from what was on SNES at the time. I remember feeling the opening 2 levels did a really good job of letting you feel like you were capable of doing awesome things before cranking up the difficulty and showing you just how lazy your timing and memory was.

I had to re-read this a few time to make sure I read right that this is a MD game. That's already pretty impressive for the hardware. Hopefully adding some more features won't bog down the framerate any. I'm sure ram is going to be his eventual limiter for features.

The technical and art direction for this looks pretty good. The visuals alone would have gotten every mag's attention back in the day. To this day I have such mixed feelings about Sega exiting the hardware business. Stuff like this makes me think they just needed better leadership to compete. But, also the truth is from a corporate finance perspective, developing bleeding edge hardware to compete against MS and Sony would have likely bankrupted the company. So, not easy to go one way or the other when you see stuff like this.

Well. I dunno about this. I mean, a DQ game on a Sega system? For sure. But, Saturn? It would have to be a bitmap approach I think. Or, I'm struggling to think of what a 3D take on DQ would have been at that point. Dreamcast would have been better, but the timing didn't align for that kind of shot.

@RaeDawnChonglingBay Realistically, that would have been most of us.

Watched the trailer. Right off it has a VERY strong vibe like the art is trying to imitate Sea of Stars. It doesn't have the same advanced lighting tech as SoS, but the pixel style is very similar. I kept reading to see if maybe they were able to get one of the artists from Sabotage Studio.

This sounds interesting, and I applaud them for having a female lead. That's important to my daughters who all love playing games.

Eh, is this really worth it vs the Atari 50 project? Without comparing the games list, this seems like a less attractive product. I never had one, and don't know what kind of computer-type things you could do with the hardware. Otherwise this is just a game emulator that probably overlaps with the Atari 50 list. Nostalgia I guess.

Although, I played a TON of the original Star Raiders game, but never the 2nd game. That might be interesting. Although I can get it from other authorized packages out there.

What's the source of the failure? I assume it probably has something to do with the material in the substrate or insulator that breaks down eventually so electrons start passing through the material which will cause errors or shorts in the transistors. Assuming it is something like that, then there is no guard or preventative. It's simply a function of time. Would also explain why A vs B is a thing; different materials used in mfr'ing. I guess I hadn't really considered this. Does give me pause about what other electronics I'm holding on to that are likely to just die at some point w/o warning.

<scrolling> <scrolling> <scrolling> dang, this is going to be a good read. let's get some coffee first. . .

I remember this well. When news circulated we fired up the disc and there it was. At the time we all thought it was super funny. I was always a little surprised there wasn't a stupid copyright lawsuit from the show. I mean, sure it would probably get thrown out because it wasn't intentional by EA. But, that's never stopped an overzealous law firm when they see a company with deep pockets like EA. I'm sure someone pitched it though.

that image in the article echoes my own view on this. Having spent so, so, so much time on the OG SNES game, it's clearer why I didn't do as well on the later games not knowing about these chains. dang. But, also I know the frame times of some champions changes as well as some hit boxes. I saw this very clearly with Chun Li. But, I also agree that this shouldn't be considered a feature since it was never marketed about the original game.

A mini would be a fun toy for the home brew community. I doubt there would be much appeal in the pack-in games. But, I doubt even if they tried to target home brew that it would sell well enough to be worth it.

It's an interesting concept for sure. But, oh man, those controls. They look more like something off an old vacuum display game; like that classic Mattel Football game that I played so much of as a kid. Without a game, not sure he'll be able to really showcase what the vision of what the system was going to be able to do.

Lawyers. It's always due to lawyers. And licensing.

Never seen this game, but it looks like a good time.

May as well go all the way for a Transformers crossover and have it modeled on Soundwave.

Since this will be an emulation device, I hope there's enough head room on the maxi to emulate a turbo board too. I wonder if it's intent will still be mostly a game machine like the mini. You can get workbench et all on the mini, but I'd like the maxi to be more of a traditional experience.

That's not a terrible price if the emulation is spot on. I loved those games back on the Amiga. I know I played this on the SNES, but I don't remember it as well as the Amiga games. Tempting to put it on a Christmas wishlist.

I'm torn on this. I get their desire to stick to the concept of simpler mechanics like the early games, but with some modern twists. I don't think it always translates well. I could see a game like Warlords would do better similar to how Yar's worked well. Looking at the video; this isn't it.

@dconstantine Yeeeeah, only if you were nerdy back then and paid attention to labels. I did because I recognized the trend in quality between publishers and especially when it was from a PAL region/publisher to know what speed the game was going to be at.

It's thinking outside the box, but assigning employees work like that would beg for a lawsuit unfortunately.

@Damo TIL! But, I would love a more in-depth look if that could be added to the schedule.

@Zenszulu Good point.

I...uhh... guess this is a thing. I was hoping the YT video might show someone trying to play with their fingers. The website has more info, like connecting to a PC and using the little dance pads as a controller. It doesn't say much about the music that'll be included. Licensing can be a huge pain these days.

I'm impressed. The frame times on the video looks solid. I assume this has to use one of the ram expanders for the C64 like Sonic does. Still, this is really impressive looking. If the controls are tight, this would be a real treat to try out.

Guess I was expecting more from this "article" than just this. How was the game received? Was did the gun perform? Lag? Accuracy? It's like this is the opening for a normal length blog post, but then the author hit send instead of save?

@BulkSlash oh, ya, an HD remaster of the TC series would be awesome. Maybe even a demo level for VR? The rapid movement might be too vomit inducing though; hence just a demo level. But, an HD remaster with an updated gun? Shut up and take my money!

@KGRAMR Ah, ya, was thinking it reminded me of something.

I think I like the idea of this. Not pure pixels, not pure 3d, rather an interesting balance. Can't tell if this is going to be Contra hard, or where it should land on the spectrum. This doesn't look too over the top hard. Hopefully there are some other features, combos maybe(?), that we haven't seen yet. Either way, I like the art direction here.

@Blast16 Agreed on them breaking that pattern. They have so many IP to work with, not just Sonic.