Darknyht

The majority of my gaming these days is retro games and older PC games that generally are considered old now. It's what I have time for and there is just something about the simplicity of their design and lack of online that appeals to me.

There are many factors at play in all of this, but the majority can be explained with the quote, “You can satisfy some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot satisfy all of the people all the time.”

Some of this is just cultural differences. Some of this is companies here in the US facing the tyranny of the minority, much how our politics are hijacked by the extreme minority. For them, there is no compromise and so they are trying to appease the ultra liberal left and the ultra conservative right at the same time (Type A and Type B, instead of Male and Female for the far left and modesty for the ultra right). In the end, we end up with a product so bland that doesn't really appeal to anyone.

As an American, we have an extremely violent society that glorifies greed, individuality, fame and power over everything else. We allowed ourselves to be manipulated by those seeking those things into thinking being treated like crap is good because we have it slightly better than [Enter ethnic or societal group].

We let our poorest kids starve at school (or give them subpar food) and call it good. We allow companies and individuals rent seek and abuse the poorest and then claim it's their own fault for not working harder. However, showing a female warrior in a bikini is somehow horrible because some flesh is showing (Apparently, these censors have not played any western RPG in a long time with their sexy female armor vs practical male armor issues).

@Zenszulu Microsoft did purchase Activision for their IP, not for their licensed game content. IP Owned means they can make yearly games in the franchise and Activision owns more than CoD and Spyro/Crash. They also now own World of Warcraft, Diablo, Starcraft, Overwatch, all of the Sierra library (King's Quest, Police Quest, Space Quest, Quest for Glory), Prototype, Blur, Gun, Pitfall, and all of King's mobile games.

As for Deadpool, another article on a different site quotes an original developer laughing at the estimate. They were quoted saying that was a GTA sized budget not Deadpool's budget.

I don't think I ever played the arcade version, but the Intellivision port was a favorite (along with Bump-n-Jump) before I got an NES.

Nintendo has innovated a lot over the years, and while not always the first at a genre they seem to distill it down well more often than not. The Gameboy beat the Game Gear (and I owned both) not just because of the games, but because the Game Gear ate batteries (even the rechargable pack I owned) at an astonishing rate. My Game Gear spent most of its time plugged into a wall which doesn't make it very portable.

I owned a Playstation and they rightfully won by choosing the CD format, but no one beat Nintendo at 3D platforming that generation. Tomb Raider probably came the closest, but that was a Saturn port. It wasn't just the controls, but having the camera not actively fight your play. 3D Platforming was a mess before Mario 64 showed others the how. Playstation developers on the other hand, curb stomped them in many, many other ways.

What people forget is that what I started with: Nintendo innovates a lot. D-Pad was a Nintendo creation. They revitalized a dying industry in the 80's. They mapped the path for portable game systems. It was Nintendo that brought back the analog stick as we know it today in the 90's. They pushed portable gaming with dual screens and then 3D. They go in a different direction constantly when everyone else is happy just reiterating on what sold last year.

All that to say, Nintendo has earned the praise they get when it comes to history.

Yes, others have gotten things right and Nintendo has allowed their own hubris to mess themselves up. But no other company has had such a track record as Nintendo has in hardware and software.

Just remember that all the hatred towards this game should be directed at incompetent people at WB. Per the wikipedia page for this game:

"Only a few days after the deal was made, the Warner Bros. licensing team changed. Based on Caen's testimony, the new group instantly hated Titus and the project and tried to stop its development. The first demand was to make Superman "a Sim City-like game, where Superman would be like the mayor of Metropolis", instead of an action game. Warner Bros. only got more coercive after Titus rejected the idea, going against any decision of the French developer. Often, their reasoning for rejection was that Superman would never do the things Titus proposed. Elements that survived, such as Superman swimming underwater, were kept in after Titus staff members showed documentation of the original Superman comics.

Some changes were mandated for reasons of putting the fictional DC Comics hero in a positive light. In addition to the limiting of Superman's powers and removal of breakable architecture, the game was set in a virtual world in order for the titular hero to not harm "real" people. Although the ring stages were originally supposed to be tutorial stages, they became a part of regular gameplay due to the other changes. These conflicts resulted in a delayed production process where "it took [Titus] months to get every single character approved" and an inability to fix bugs and issues associated with the collision detection and controls that the final product would be criticized for. Near the end of its development, technical support was provided for Titus by Nintendo of America."

I'll always wonder what could have been had WB not inflicted it's usual stupidity on the team trying to make the game.

@cdog555 I agree they have a more invested interest and if they put out a quality release like Atari 50th I will be interested. I just worry they will also put out $1000 collector crap that is half-baked also. The Blue Rangers did what they could to preserve the memory, I just hope the new stewards show the same love for its legacy.

At the same time I weep that these games should be in the public domain, but by the time they reach it they will be about as useful as silent movies are to most modern audiences.

While I am happy that Amico no longer has the Intellivision rights, I am not sure that the holding company that is Atari 3.0 (or is it 4.0, can't keep track of all the different Atari's in the past 50 years) is going to be a much better steward. Given their track record of playing by Limited Run Games playbook (overpriced items made as cheaply as possible), I fear what they will produce.

Still Nightstalker, Lock N' Chase, Burgertime, Bump 'n Jump, Minotaur (formally AD&D Treasure of Tarmin), Beauty and the Beast, Dragonfire, Tron: Deadly Discs, and He-Man were my early childhood gaming along with a dozen other titles. The Intellivision II (and Odyssey II) made up my video game consoles until I got the NES with PowerPad for Christmas in 1988.

@KingMike If they own the PAC-Man VCS cart, why would Bandi-Namco (or Namco-Bandi, can’t keep track of their swapping) care? Granted it is a piece of crap version of the game, and while there are much better homebrew versions my understanding is they don’t work well with the 2600+.

All this new Atari has done is burn the goodwill of their superfans. They could have purchase those games for $5 - $10 each (or less) on eBay, but instead paid $1000. Atari should be overnighting them replacements and including a copy of E.T. The video game dug out of the landfill as an apology.

@Daggot the fan remake removes the ability to get stuck by misusing an item. That alone takes a lot of sting out of it. My first play through of KQ5 had one of those moments where I had to start over because I misused and item and didn’t have it when I needed it.

@RetroGames Dragon Quest I & II were on SNES, but only in Japan. I think only the fourth game never made it to SNES before they moved over to the Playstation. It was what the GBC versions that released here in the US was based on.

I might have to check this out, although the simplicity of the original is part of the appeal for me.

I never played the early ones (despite now owning them), but King's Quest V, VI, and VII were enjoyable. Sierra pushed a lot of concepts we take for granted, but they also could be punishingly brutal (and inventive) in their killing you. I would recommend the remakes that remove some of that sting if you want to play them (of course, buy the originals to support the creators).

I will always be thankful for King's Quest, Quest for Glory, Gabriel Knight, and other franchises that were part of my childhood.

I grew up in a house that eventually had an original C-64, two C-64C's and a C-128. I used the C-128 until the mid-90's when I inherited an old 8088 that was replaced. Q-Link and GEOS contributed to many book reports and I probably spent way too much time on there gaming and creating text adventures in BASIC.

My dad's GILM Football is still out there on the net that he wrote for a friend and it somehow survived all these years. He also ran a basic BBS on the C-128 for a few years using a speedy commodore branded modem.

I still am amazed at all the things programmers did back then with such limited resources. I cannot help but feel that most software these days are just bloated.

Mario, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, and Sonic all should come before Lara Croft.

She might be in the running for most well known disproportionate female character, but Barbie is a strong competitor as is a lot of Japanese game characters.

I loved that game as a kid and hated it at the same time. I remember that mission and a few others that were brutal. At the same time, I also remember finishing a mission but instead of jumping away I would turn and take down a Star Destroyer once it ran out of fighters solo.

The true fun of the game was to play around with the editor someone made for it. Making your own levels that probably made the worse of the game look mild.

I had to replace the battery in the gamepad, but otherwise the console is still kicking. Kids still play it regularly for Minecraft and a few other games (Need for Speed, Batman, Monster Hunter, etc.)

@SonOfDracula If you want to play word games, then yes there are more means (medium, method, or instrument to acquire something) to purchase a game. But generally speaking most lack the means (resources or income) to make the purchase.

None of which changes the point. This is a stupid argument every time it brought up because still uses at a single factor (inflation adjusted price) to present an false argument while ignoring the economic realities of the eras they are comparing.

This has been and will always be a crap argument. Yes, games were priced $60 back then, but milk cost $2.50 a gallon, eggs were $0.92 a dozen, bread was $0.89, and ground beef was $1.49 a pound. The average home cost around $85k and gas was usually less than $2 a gallon. A fast food burger cost $0.91 and a Taco Bell taco was $0.49.

All that to say that people's money went further back then and you had more disposable income after paying for necessities. So while a $70 technically costs less now, people had more means to purchase games back then. Wages have been stagnate since 1970 so every year inflation takes a increasing bite out of people's spending power.

So yeah, back in the Playstation era, I bought games every paycheck because $20 was nothing. Now, I purchase a game maybe once or twice a year because $60-70 is a major purchase. Hell, I remember my family (parents, plus three teenage kids) eating fast food for $20; now a trip to fast food for my family of 5 is almost cost of a video game unless we eat exclusively on the bargain menu.

I remember that I wanted this game as a kid. I loved Street Fighter but had moved to buying GB games over SNES ones because they were cheaper and also played on the Super Game Boy. I ended up buying MK2 instead and looking back it was probably a much better choice. MK2 on GB was at least playable.

Console power isn't something that necessarily bothers me. I have been primarily playing on Nintendo consoles which have been underpowered compared to the competition since the Wii. However, there are serious concerns and flaws in leaked documentation around this console. The constant chasing of marketing fads is a concern, as this console should be fairly nailed down at this point in development.

As I have said before, I love the original Intellivision. This thing sets off my danger sense on multiple levels. This is approaching the level of artificial hype of "The Devil's Third" by the producer just before release.

Can the Blue Sky Rangers please reclaim the Intellivision brand from these guys? They are single-handedly ruining all the good feelings I have for the Intellivision I grew up with. #FreeRunningMan

@Savino I wasn't the one that made the following statement:

"Any rom is illegal. If you read the fine prints on any cartridge/CD/DVD/BRD you will see that the software can´t be copied, reversed engineered or altered in any form."

Obviously that is a false statement. It ignores the US first-sale doctrine and "fair use" provisions for backup/archival purposes in case of the original being damaged/stolen.

In fact, this issue more than anything else is why content creators are pushing so hard to move everything to "Content as a Service" because people then rent/lease everything instead of owning content.

@Savino Really? Because I purchased 50+ ROM files (including various region releases of the same game) legally by purchasing Sega Genesis & Mega Drive Classics. I also got another dump of ROMs from Atari Collection. The SNES/NES Classic also have ROM files sitting there if you know how to access them. How dare Nintendo, Sega, and Atari distribute always illegal ROM files.
.

~$80 for 40+ actual games instead of the crap on the retrobit handhelds isn't that bad a deal. I figure this will do well with the first/second generation fans, hobbyists, and kids that end up with this as a gift from grandma with little other options.

If more developers come on board (Capcom, Sega, and maybe some indies) then this might be something, but I would imagine the firm price on carts limits this thing.

@ricardosteve Not really, the site works on advertising and clicks. Everyone that simply clicks on the article to announce their dislike is just sending a signal that they will get clicks (money) for continuing to behave that way. So if you stop clicking, they stop getting positive feedback. Likewise, if people actually did click on articles about switch accessories there would be no end of reviews of them.

@Folkloner the point was that you don’t have to read the article if the topic doesn’t interest you. Obviously enough people are interested that it is worth this site’s time to cover it. If your only comment on the article is to complain about the article, then why not do something else entirely?

I mean if you are that passionate about switch accessories, the start covering them in the forums (or your own YouTube page). But why is it NintendoLife’s responsibility to purchase 99 identical switch stands to tell you they work just like they advertise?

@MagnaRoader @EmirParkreiner @Folkloner No body forces you to click on the article. For those of us that have an interest in retro stuff, it is interesting to see how Atari, Namco, Interplay, and Data East are licensing their back-catalogue.

Plus, this is of note in that it is selling cheap and if it gets the right indie support can undercut Nintendo's console which gets mostly old games and Indies from third parties.

There are some legendary games in those collections but there are also a lot of duds, especially in the Atari stuff. I am intrigued by the idea, but unless they can get some heavier hitters onboard I don't see this doing anything but carving a niche market.

all the more reason that emulation and preservation is so vital.

I love the idea of a micro console, but I think the Nintendo Classics series and Neo Geo Mini are the closest we will get for now. I would have loved to see the Ouya succeed (or even the Atari VCS appear), but I don't think there is a chance for that.

@Kalmaro I have a small collection of homebrew NES games ROMS and some are of decent quality. It would be nice to be able to play them on original hardware.

Somehow my mind is automatically filling Konami into all the company name redacted spots and it doesn't seem that far fetched.

@Ogbert That was the era that brought so many great exclusives (at least for a time) and new IPs. Capcom created Viewtiful Joe (1 & 2), Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil Zero, and Killer7 for the Gamecube while Re-releasing the older RE games and Megaman games on it. Square-Enix created Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles which still makes me wonder what could have been for the Wii U. Sega brought games like Skies of Arcadia, Super Monkey Ball, and Sonic Adventure DX (and help create F-Zero GX). Nintendo created Eternal Darkness, Metroid Prime, Animal Crossing, Pikmin, and Luigi's Mansion while facilitating the creation of Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. Namco brought Tales of Symphonia and Star Fox: Assault. Then you had all the western third party releases and the other Nintendo IPs.

That was a golden era indeed.

This was a good game, and man do I miss my Gamecube. That is probably my favorite console of all time. That library just had so many good games, and a lot of them were not Nintendo properties.

@OorWullie I also owned a Mini-disc player. It and quite a few blank mini-discs served me well for quite a few years until I purchased a second generation iPod for Mac. The quality was better, but the transfer process was a bit painful (my mini-disc player was one of the early models).