Daniel36

Sad. Meanwhile, Alkmaar, the Netherlands recently OPENED a sort of arcade, though not dedicated solely to arcade machines. Can't speak for its quality yet, though I might visit soon. Amsterdam has a few too.

Thankfully we still have a million pieces of sludge reels, endless podcast clips and poorly done AI voice over clips to tie us over.

But I guess it's on me that I keep falling for the Shorts section. Horrible place.

@DestructoDisk But it is SO MUCH FUN!! And it's not like Time Extension is sending people his way. They are themselves very clear of what this guy is up to. No good.

I couldn't have come up with a better, worse written letter if I tried, and I consider myself a rather competent writer.

This is beyond delusion.

Everything they have written thus far was poorly done. This at least has some competence, but also clearly isn't created by ai. This leads me to believe they actually asked someone to check their work for mistakes, something they should have done for everything else...

I enjoy this saga greatly.

So the Lambo was his? Wow. That maies everything even worse than it already was.

So basically he took everyone's pre-order money and instead of putting it into the product he bought himself a very expensive car.

Would play.

I find "low stakes" games have more impact than so called save the world type games. We need more of these type of games.

@JackGYarwood No prob. Honest mistake. The 90's were better, and also just sounds better than the 00's.

Honestly, that looks amazing! I don't even see that huge a difference between this and more recent shooters.

Sure, those are graphically even more impressive, but this doesn't even lag behind all that much.

But uhmm... early '90s?

@BLAZINOAH Edgelord, lol... that's a very apt title.

I have never heard of the game or peripheral before. Now I need some footage because it sounds super interesting.

The trophy is cute too.

Unrelated, this is the stuff I visit this site for. Utterly random and fun stuff!

I also took 90 minutes of not understanding this game, Dark Souls...

Maybe, one day, I will revisit it. If I ever find time.

Netflix should get on this for a mockumentary. Have Ricky Gervais produce it.

David Earl or Joe Wilkinson can play this guy. Either one would be great.

Karl Pilkington can play that guy that is trying out the games while his kid asks him if the system sucks.

Diane Morgan can do that woman who got redubbed in the trailer reel "SuperSakgg".

The script is writing itself in real life.

SuperSaga!

@nocdaes I took the SuperIan bit as him thinking nobody can own a word or name, so using the name Sega is fine. To him a word like Super and a word like Sega are the same.

Which of course is completely wrong. Sure, you can't own the word Super, but... I am preaching to the choir here.

Well, at least for us it's a super fun ride.

That banner picture is absolutely golden!!

I watched a small part, and my goodness, this is something else. What's your name? Ian, I call it SuperIan.

Yeah, that's not how it works, hahaha.

How is this saga still going on? It's like the X Files, it gets crazier and crazier. We can call it the Super Saga by now.

They should've just called it that. SuperSaga.

I hope they're not reading this.

@HelenaFG13 I feel like I can give you a small hand, so I will.

If you are afraid of taking inspiration from mechanics, don't.

If I recall correctly (and I might not, mind you, but hear me out), the Palworld thing is Nintendo suing Palword over literal copying of code. I might be wrong, but there you are. And as many others have already stated, Nintendo took this approach because that wasn't the only thing they've done, just the most assured way of getting them to stop.

Their monsters are so close to literal copies of Pokemon, that it means they are clearly using Pokemon's popularity and fame to push their own game. If the monsters looked more like dinosaurs or something, or just a large variety of cartoony dogs, there probably would have never been a problem.

In your example of Tomodachi Life, Nintendo doesn't own the idea of islands, of appartments on islands, of shops, of food. Of people living their lives. But to give an analogy, Coca Cola or Pepsi don't own the rights to soda pop with a cola taste. You are free to come up with a formula and release it. It becomes a problem when your can looks a lot like a Coca Cola can or a Pepsi can, and you call your product Caco Cola or something. Or Pupsi. Or Poopsie... Though you're probably not going to sell a lot of that...

It's a grey area for a reason. But make your can purple and call it Fresh Cola, and there probably isn't a problem. Don't call your game Tomodachi Fun or something, don't closely recreate the Mii look, don't have them talk in a weird AI voice, and you will be fine. Nintendo doesn't even own the name Tomodachi (which literally means friend), but if the game idea is similar, and the name is similar, it becomes a problem. You can call your main character Mario, just don't give him a red hat and make him a plumber and make his main skill jumping really high.

I actually have had a very similar kind of idea as what you describe for a very long time, but I lack the time and skills to create it, so I will leave it at a dream stage.

Unless you guys need someone to create music, then I can join you and pitch my part of the ideas I have.

I am well aware of the fact that I am tarring with the same brush here, but my first thought was "That's rich, coming from Spain." Spain seems to basically be Europe's China when it comes to this. HeroQuest, SuperSega, and that's just off the top of my head.

But hey, Astrobot won game of the year, and that is clearly a tribute to 3D Mario. They even acknowledged as much in their winning speech. So there's your stifled creativity.

I wanted to go super snarky here, but I will just leave it at this.

@KitsuneNight I fully applaud your efforts!

I do not have a backlog that big to begin with, so I guess my gaming habits are a lot more tame. My current main hobby is building scenery for tabletop wargaming and roleplaying. As you can imagine, that takes a lot of time too.

Once I get tired of that, chances are I will pick up making music again. But all of this is besides spending time with my family, and unfortunately a LOT of time spent at work.

I get lucky if I have energy and time left for hobbies an hour a day.

@KitsuneNight Well, I doubt I will hit playing even 90 minutes for the past few months, let alone finish a game.

But, full disclosure, I have quite a few more hobbies besides videogames. Still love reading about them on my commutes and downtimes.

That is an insanely large variety of bonuses. I am glad I kicked the FOMO habit and I feel bad for diehard fans of this series.

What to do? Order it from every single shop to get all the goodies?

I've never really played the game. I always LOVED the look of it, probably read reviews of it a hundred times over, and this animé artwork makes it even more awesome.

I actually put it on my Mini SNES to give it a try, but this past year I maybe have spent a couple of hours in total on gaming. I did play it for a bit, and it's a fun game, but there is way too much stuff demanding my attention.

Haha, sounds like none of us are any fun at parties. We should host one together. Most awkward party ever. Legendary!

@Bod2019 It's still a cool find though, that someone 35 years on connected the dots. Some parts really are straight up copied.

It's cool that someone noticed it. In that sense, it kind of is easter eggish..

I'll shut up now. ^_^

@-wc- Koji Kondo, well I will remember that name now, as it sounds like it sparks joy ^_^ Pretty easy to remember name.

It does look stellar, nay, interstellar!

Articles like these are why I love this site.

@-wc- Yeah,I didn't know his name nor could I name anything else he would've worked on. I also do not know the names of composers for Mario games.

Wouldn't even know the name of the composer of my fave video game series, Suikoden. Don't even know the name of who came up with that series, even though I know he died a while ago. Japanese names are difficult to remember.

Only composers I know by name are Uematsu and Mitsuda, and of those two I would probably only really recognize Mitsuda's style. I could probably pick new tunes of his out of a crowd. Uematsu's work I wouldn't recognize as being his, probably.

Hmm... I wouldn't call that an easter egg as much as I'd call it copying a cool industrial looking panel because the artist couldn't come up with anything else to put there and liked the general look of it.

An easter egg would look the exact same.

Edit: I am indeed no fun at parties.

@MSaturn Well, it didn't work FOR ME. Not sure why, if I remember correctly I got into a death loop login with the Ubisoft account you apparently need to be able to play (Was it uPlay or something?)

I wasn't bothered to try and resolve it, as there was plenty of other stuff to do. So... It could've been a fluke.

@-wc- Agreed. While many of us know the SoM soundtrack, and it is great, all of the other projects he has been involved in are arguably niche.

Then again, I am also terrible at names. The only game musician names I can remember are Uematsu and Mitsuda.

Well, physical games can require an active online presence and basically forcibly shut you out of a game at any time all the same, so it really doesn't make a difference anymore.

I was gifted a Ubisoft game a while ago, can't remember the name but it was basically Zelda with Greek mythology, and my kids played it for a little while, opened the game back up and couldn't log in anymore. So that cartridge was worth absolutely nothing anymore.

Same can happen to any game, if the publishers decide to be crappy about it.

@poyo_pie Well, there you have it. I agree with you on both accounts, pacing and the faux philosophy thing.

You probably reached about the same part where I gave up. I loved the art, the music was sublime, and the combat was cool, but I couldn't take much more of the story.

So it surprises me how high up it is. Mayhaps it is the marriage between traditional RPG and Mecha combat that really resonates with the Japanese audience.

@Deuteros Wow, opening the website and being Greeted by a screenshot of Battle of Olympus sure hit me in the feels!! Thanks for the link.

Xenogears surprises me. It's an amazing game but I felt it dragged on for a bit in the later part.

Wild Arms is surprising too. Amazing intro, but the game itself is very mehh to me.

Seeing Suikoden up high fills me with joy. Can't wait for the remasters. My most important game of all time, together with FF6.

@Deuteros Yeah gave the scans a try once, but it doesn't quite hit the same.

And the few mags that are still out there also don't seem to do it for me, or are prohibitively priced.

Funnily enough, Time Extension seems to... well, at least scratch adjacent to the itch. And I got an actual itch while typing this lol.

Super Play. All I kept were cutouts from the FF3 articles. Shame on me.

@GlamorousAlpaca Even if this were 100% taken from a 25 year old magazine, this website is called Time Extension, and I'd wager most of us come here precisely for the nostalgia.

I sometimes wish I still had some of the 25 year old magazines I once had. I miss flicking through them and reading the same review over and over. This is the next best thing.

And since I didn't have this particular mag, this is new old news for me. And I LOVE it.

Well, naming both does and doesn't matter. Powermonger or Warmonger or Conqueror, no it doesn't matter. But call it Rupert Battlesheep and the entire vibe is different. Wouldn't have rented that.

Oh man have I not forgotten this game. Rented it so many times on SNES, but NEVER understood how it worked.

But by the stars did I love the idea of it. I don't think I ever made it past the initial scenario though.

@Deuteros Ooooh Utopia. I LOVE that game so much.

@Zeebor15 I salute you. That is some undertaking.

@Zeebor15 Is that...

Scratches eyes out

Is that a list of every game ever made or something?

While intriguing, and certainly not something to ridicule, I have to ask, why?

This news is so random. A pop up store for a 30 year old game.

Japan, Japan... you are of a different dimension.

@Zeebor15 You have my curiosity. What kind of spreadsheet is that all about?

Don't remember too much of the film, but honestly, these days it isn't hard to "write" a blockbuster movie. They are all copy paste drivel if you ask me.

I wish Hollywood would stop recreating the same thing over and over, only adding more and more eye candy over their plot armour equipped cardboard characters.

Again, can't remember if this movie falls into that same category, but from what little I remember it probably was.

I am really interested in finding out what it is these guys are smoking to be this delusional.

Mind you, so I can warn people of the dangers.

Amazing looking art, but I watched some footage and while it certainly had some novel ideas, it didn't look like it would be fun playing it now. A remaster would be better.

The HD graphics do not look good. Flash-quality. I am all for anniversary remakes/remasters, but this is not the right way to do it, in my opinion.

The AI art usage just adds another layer on top of that way.

But I really don't have many eggs in this basket, so I will just leave it at that. If any one of the devs may read this, simply reprogramming the game and adding what can only be described as Flash-era "upgrades" to the spritework, that just doesn't cut it.

@Matroska No, I mentioned it was damn with sonething in front of it. And to make it clear enough while stepping over my squeemishness, I meant with god in front of it. And since the game in question very ckearly did not have gods, it basically was the same as Tifa saying she likes French cooking.

What you are also saying is showing why I prefer not necessarily as true as possible translations. They need to be idioms we can understand, and Japanese is FILLED with idioms we don't.

@RupeeClock Well, fair enough, my example may have been a mistranslation or interpretation instead of a literal translation.

And sure, I was interpreting too. Still though, and maybe this is just an entirely different gripe of mine, but original texts in games, I feel people put too much weight in it. If th original's author's heart wasn't even in it, and a translator does put heart in it, what would be better? I sonetimes feel people think too highly of it.

@RupeeClock Yeah, and that is where I will choose to remain extremely bull-headed, because the choice of words doesn't always mean a certain, specific intention.

I would argue the original creators intend to paint a picture that resonates with the players in a way that it creates a believable world within the confines of its setting, and that means different things to different cultures.

Their intent is to get players immersed, and how would you do that with esoteric mannerisms and speech patterns?

In my example, I think the term "dammit" was used, with another term in front of it (Yes, I am squeemish about it), but the setting made very clear there were no gods in our sense of the word. It would be comparable to a knight talking about driving a Tesla, for us. Such terms may hold a very different feel in whatever the original word choice was.

I will proudly die on this hill, but can merrily accept people disagreeing with me.

Ugh... Most swear words have no place in a fantasy medieval game. It's not censoring when it is trying to be more faithful to the setting.

Japan has such a wildly different way of speaking, that literal translations make a lot less sense, and I feel swearing is a large part of that.

I once aided a translation project, and despite my objections they went ahead and threw in a bunch of swearing that had absolutely no logical, in-world reason to exist, and it made me sad. That said, I later found out that an officially translated game in that same series also had swearing in one scene. I also hated it there.

But to each their own. Some people wish for translations to be as faithful as possible, I lean very heavily towards the side that appreciates localization efforts that try to make it more pallatable to Western audiences. There is something to be said for both sides.

@Poltergeist8606 There are plenty of Kickstarters from serious hobbyists who want to turn their dream project into reality that have, in fact, panned out and got released.

It is not outside of the realm of possibility.

As to your reaction to TaurusBulba, them naming it the way they do might actually have to do with the fact that they are based in Spain. I am not too knowledgeable about this, but apparently Spain has a pretty lackse stance on brand names being used.

Not entirely sure on the hows and whats, bu I know it's happened before with a board game, HeroQuest, which was produced by a Spanish company that ended up only being sold there under that name, before they decided to just rename it altogether, since they had to do that anyways for other countries.

Anyhoo, whatever you think of people who backed this, at least for us who didn't, this is comedy gold.

@HammerGalladeBro - "how the hey you cannot tell when a button doesn't respond to the prompt at the title screen to make you think you're actually playing during the attract mode, let alone twice and on a split screen for no reason?"

I was wondering if that was just me, but I noticed it too, him pressing stuff that in no way corresponded to what was happening on screen. Funny that.

@ruiner9 Yeah, I understand that, to an extent, it's okay, but these guys seem to use a lot of assets, mostly graphical, that look like they are at the least extremely straddling the line.

Finally. I stopped playing games after Ant Attack, because I wanted to wait for a sequel. Now, I can finally continue playing.

Joking aside, this is really cool. Hadn't heard of the Spectrum Next before, and I am a smidge too young to have witnessed the original, but I can certainly appreciate this continuation of older tech, much in the same way I really enjoy indies keeping the NES and SNES aesthetic alive.