Grackler

Listened to a podcast with Jon Hare recently, and he came across well. Seems to understand that it'll be likely impossible to top Sensible Soccer and has come to terms with that! I've tried Sociable briefly, but it doesn't match up to booting up Sensible on the Evercade. Hope it does well though!

It doesn't seem to have a unique selling point at all!
"The unique selling point of Recade is that it will allow you to legally play '70s, '80s and '90s coin-op titles either locally or online, benefitting from features such as screen filters, voice chat, cloud saves and more. The idea is to sell the base unit cheaply and then support the platform's growth with a traditional subscription-based business model."

Surely Antstream already does this?
And Evercade if you don't want to follow a subsciption model?
They don't have any unique licences, and both AntStream and Evercade have way more beyond arcade and a good deep library.

This just seem too late to the party.

No overlap is interesting! I don’t have a Super Pocket, but I’m tempted on this as the games are different to the cart.

I’m getting this just for Hogs of War, love that game! Be nice to play 3D Worms before Worms 3D, and to hear Rik Mayall’s great voice work on it again too.

I'm hoping for a nice mix of retro and quality indie/homebrew titles. Other than a new Super Pocket I'm not sure if new hardware is needed yet?

Wasn't it DK Mode back in Goldeneye, with elongated arms to go with the big heads?

An excellent read, well written and researched! This kind of article is solving the issue somewhat in itself, getting the varied viewpoints of different markets and describing how they interplay.

I felt this bit was important: "(it's worth noting, too, that everyone is guilty of this to some degree; how many British gamers, for example, are aware of video game history in France, Spain, Germany, South Africa, Hong Kong or Brazil? We all do it!)."
I agree, I as a Brit am very guilty of mostly knowing about my nation, the USA and Japan. I really don't know about even France or Germany when it comes to gaming history. However I would say the big issue that causes so much consternation is when US-centric journalists presume that all those other markets were either exactly like the US no matter what locals say; or non-US markets/cultures are simply of no value to history and should be forgotten ASAP. That's the attitude Grubb (and others) have show regarding gaming history that gets people's goat up, in my opinion. Rather than saying "I don't really know" and letting others deal with it, or finding out something new, it's attacked as "a scene" or "of no importance".

I swear we did this when we were kids playing splitscreen (dying same time and drawing 1st), but hearing how unlikely it is, now I think it's probably a Mandela Effect!

@Mini8401 read the entire comment for pity’s sake. I pulled out some random numbers quickly (something Grubb who make the original WRONG claim didn’t do). There were many more models of micros than consoles, the total sales in the UK per head of population were easily comparable to consoles per capita in the US in the 80s; and they were used almost exclusively for games.

It’s just a damn fact; there wasn’t a gaming crash in the UK (and much of Europe) as micro computers were the main way people played games. It’s fact, we all lived through it and it’s well documented. Why do Americans keep making claims that they cannot back up as thy weren’t in the UK or even around at the time!? It’s infuriating.

@tektite_captain They were popular in the UK, it’s not an impression. Many firms and full print magazines will full staff existed around them. That is literally the point, it WAS a big deal over here. It wasn’t in the US. Different places, different histories.

I’m not going to debate it any more in bad faith, those numbers easily rival the NES in the US (30 mil over 6 years), particularly per head of pop. You asked for numbers, I gave some, I’d say the onus is on the “journalist” making the claim in the first place to provide numbers, not those disagreeing in comments.

@tektite_captain they weren’t comparatively small in Europe though; that’s the point, they sold great guns during the crash in the US! Quick figure I got on my phone: The ZX Spectrum alone sold over 5 million units, around 2/3 of the 17 million C64 were sold in Europe, 1.5 million BBC Micros, 3 million Amstrad CPC, as well as countless other models from those companies (smaller time between models than consoles, for example over 1.5 million ZX81s before Spectrum), and many other firms (Dragon32, Apple 2, IBM…).

He’s wrong to dismiss it as nothing just because it was nothing much in the US. The games market on them were huge, loads of big firms came out of that era in the UK alone (Rare, DMA/Rockstar, Codemasters, ARM…) as it was a huge and important part of gaming history outside the USA (where the micro didn’t take off compared to consoles). It’s literally the point of the entire article.

@tektite_captain I don’t think that’s fair. It’s not the thrust at all. It’s more, stop telling us our history didn’t happen. Grubb does the same as many “historians” and claims (wrongly) only American history happened and the rest of the world was so insignificant we should stop pretending anything happened there. It’s ridiculous and clearly wrong. The home computer scene was huge and important, the effects are still felt today.

Looks good, hope it is! Would love a physical version on Evercade if that’s possible!

I mean it kind of sums up the amount of though the heads of these mega corps put in. Don’t know the studio name, don’t know the people,place or games; but their failure after 1 game sold badly was all down to them and nothing to do with higher up management/marketing etc from us. Why let that studio learn from that mistake, throw that experience and the many successes before out the door. And they’ll then wonder outloud how Nintendo does so well when it doesn’t fire staff at the first sign of poor sales.

I think most firms like Activision succeed despite the “Bobby Koticks” of this world, and not because of them. In charge of Nintendo he would have fired Miyamoto after Wii Music and the hardware team after the GameCube.

Perfectly fine. Inflation, increased business costs in the UK, and growing ambitions at Blaze (more staff, more expensive licences etc).

They seem to have gotten on top of cart quality as well which is nice. Hoping for some big hitters this year!

That is tragic, I’ve not got round to going even though it’s not too far away. Flooding has been bad in the area.

I’ll drop some money to help them, and finger crossed the exhibits aren’t damaged too much.

Hoping to see some positive updates on TE in the future.

All the signs point to an abandoning of mini-consoles/old games on eShops and moving to subscription service. Could be good if they get M2 on it, but they have to offer a really good service to be noticeable at the scale I assume Sega wants.

Bit cynical of him, given they have milked there Mega Drive years more than anyone else I can think of! I never minded, it was a bit much but you couldn’t fail to find ways to play Sonic 1 and 2!

I’m a bit sad as they used to work with Blaze on (quite rubbish) TV-plug-in-consoles before the (quite good) Mega Drive minis, so I was hoping they might do some Evercade carts! Seem unlikely now.

Overreaction. It’s there but “horrible” or “unplayable” are so over the top.

Some game have issues, but I’d say they are mostly on the N64, and they are still mostly playable just slightly inferior. But the average player isn’t going to bother buying a Tritron and OG hardware just to dabble with an old game, when he can do it with 2 clicks and a bit of lag they probably won’t notice (and save states/rewind etc)

It will never be perfect, but it’s fine.

A lot of comments! And some spirited debate.

I’m hopeful that a visible backlash against AI slop like this will be partly self-regulating: in that a game made without it will be a selling point (“hand-crafted” if you will). I don’t know where regulation can/will sit in future, but recent examples have shown that ideas pushed by tech interests can be pushed back into a niche with this kind of coverage (remember how much stuff was needlessly Crypto related a couple of years ago?), and that makes emotive articles like this worthwhile I feel. Keep some semblance of consumer input and choice.

Saw one on display in a shop window in Hinckley when I went to see the Brett Jones exhibit and didn’t realise it wasn’t out yet or in such demand! Should have swooped on it!

I don’t have many memories of the Spectrum, it was before my time really, but it seems likes a really good unit for those that have nostalgia for it!

Amazing these have been found. And Chessmaster Sega Channel version looks like a solid improvement on the Game Gear one!

Very impressive port, but foolish to charge openly for it. The odds of a takedown massively increase doing that sadly!

@RootsGenoa scratch that, found it on a YouTube descriptions, it’s “Chao Games Show” (Expo). It’s a virtual event held by a website called “Hedgehog Institute” to show off sonic related fan games.

@RootsGenoa I’ve genuinely struggled! I imagine GS stands for game show, it could mean gamescom (Cologne Games Show?) but that doesn’t seem right.
I can’t find reference to it is “CGS 2024”; nowhere can I find what that actually means!

@Damo what is CGS2024 exactly, I did a little phone google but got a clinical conference 😅

Actually seems like something we would have got as kids at that price, no idea if the kids of today will be into it though!

Interesting. I enjoy OpenTTD but I prefer it with the old graphics and music (got the files off the CD), and many added mechanics don’t gel with me. A re-release closer the original would be nice (but I guess pointless as I can do it on OpenTTD with a bit of work?)

Where is/are the disc drive(s) for those Saturn/Dreamcast games? This looks and sounds sketchier all the time! They only have a vague simple CAD render but they’ll have a batch load by next year? What about a sample from the supplier (I serious doubt they have one lined up at all)? Or at least a 3D print fit? And couldn’t they find someone to proof-read that statement?

I’m not savvy enough to say either way of it’s real or not; I could believe they could make a board that could do Master System/Mega Drive as shown in those rough videos. But looking into it more it’s going to go as far as Dreamcast!? That seems far-fetched, developing a core themselves, and the FPGA would have to be quite large?
If it’s real great, I’d wait for it to exist before caring!

@PZT Our house had as many copies of Croc as it did Banjo, but I know which one I'd rather replay!
Big fan of Argonaut and hope this does ok, but I really didn't rate it at the time, middling at best. In hindsight it was technically really impressive for the PlayStation, but I didn't appreicate that at the time. Analogue control could help a lot as well? I recall playing it on a pre-Dual Shock pad and it been clunky.

Mario 64, Banjo, Ape Escape, Rocket (Robot on Wheels), and perhaps Glover are my personal picks of that era of 3D platformers.

Can’t think of a clever Red Dwarf gag so I’ll just say: This is very cool, looking forward to it! (Wish they’d held off on the Evercade cart until this was done!)

GAME haven’t shipped my Tomb Raider cart. The crappy new website hasn’t got my order on, I contacted customer services and they won’t get back to me. Can’t even get a refund.

They also stiffed me on the GAME Elite refund, despite saying they would refund the half a year I had left they gave me a token £1. Basically impossible to talk to. Such a turn around from a few years ago. Hate what that greedy bugger Mike Ashley has done to the last UK game retailers.

As a kid (with the controller and console and games in a carrier bag hanging off my bike handle bars) this might have helped; but these days it’s just the age and normal use. Haven’t got round to replacing my more worn ones yet.
Fascinating mechanism in them! Is interesting to see how stick design started and has evolved.

@FurdTurgidson @robe it does allow programming in Sinclair BASIC! There’s more details on the website, and a quite in-depth article in the latest Retro Gamer. Sounds like it has a wrapper to launch games and such, but you can switch into the classic OS and play with basic etc.

@robe me too! I want to play with the machine as much as the games, play with Sinclair BASIC a bit.

@robe I was wondering this! And the rewind/save states etc; does it have some simple wrapper OS for that? Is that where games launch from? It’s a bit unclear how it works at the moment.

@LowDefAl good point, hadn’t thought of shipping!

It’s rough as they keep having delays; but given previous issues with Evercade’s I’d rather they quality checked properly. I hope the cost of these issues is on the Chinese manufacturers and not all a hit to Blaze!
I’m surprised the TATE grips are affected? They are dumb chunks of plastic, but they have the device slotted in, so I’m guessing it’s a tolerancing/fit issue?

I love gaming magazines, bemoan their disappearance, and should be the market for this, but £15 is a high asking price.
Retro Gamer is 1/3 of that, and their “special” issues on series (like Zelda, Mario etc) are usually £9.99.
I’m guessing it’s ad free? But they are getting to the point where it’s better to market as a book in my mind.

Not sure I’d travel to Paris for this, but it looks cool!

@ryancraddock the NLCode links don’t go to something that works, that codes page has been “coming soon” for a while now.

@RetroGames a nice sensible reply! While they occasionally overstep, Nintendo aren’t as draconian at IP protection as people make out, it usually is a case of money changing hands gets them to rev up the lawyers.

Not saying they aren’t sometimes overbearing with fan works, but I would say international IP law and the importance of their (child friendly) character’s to them is more to blame than a hatred of fans.

I wish I'd known this was on! maybe next year.

My only concern is I preordered with GAME, and I'm worried Mike Ashley will run it into the ground before Tomb Raider gets shipped!

Tons of Switch Online games have issues from the emulation. Even if you use the N64 controller (as although it copies the layout it doesn’t have the same kind of components as the original). F-Zero X is crazy twitchy! But it isn’t alone, the quick and simple Xbox port of Goldeneye was pretty ropey too.

I think it’s why there isn’t an N64 mini. N64 is just tough to do justice to via emulator, ideally you want people to spend serious time on a port to sand off the issue that occur with straight emulation (I’m thinking of 4Js effort on Perfect Dark for Xbox/Rare Replay or Nightdive’s Doom 64 and Turok. Nintendo’s Mario 64 in All-stars isn’t too bad either).

It’s just a strange machine internally with the complex but bespoke functions and that unique tri-point filtering, controller-wise with (essentially) 6 button front and a stick unlike any modern one, and comes from the worse era for the move from CRT to pixel based screens for the graphics too (nasty gaps in polygons, those textures that are tough to filter how the were etc) . Along with emulator lag that inevitably happens, games just end up feeling rough unless someone spends time (and cash) on it.

Interesting! I have a soft spot for these from the GC era, but was put of the Switch release as it was so bare bones (didn't look all that great an HD update, the English voice cast was binned off...).
I can see fans modding the Steam ones to be more what people want, so I'll keep an eye on them!

I’m not too fussed about the look for Joanna. I do think the game looks so different from Perfect Dark it’s not worth using the name. Different music, vibe, plot, universe, gameplay style. No multiplayer. It’s first person and has some shooting, but it’s as close to Doom or Deus Ex as Perfect Dark!

@merman awesome, thought it was gone, thank you!

A note to @TimeExtension or @merman (hoping one of thise works), the link to Bob Pape's book PDF is a 403 forbidden for me, I think it might be a dead link, sadly.

Late to this, but for people who might like Knightmare, I found the "Knightmare Live!" comedy stage show to be excellent! Seen it at the Fringe a decade or so ago, and a pre-Covid in Manchester, I think they still tour. It's not a reboot as such (it's kid friendly but clearly made for the adult audience that enjoyed it in the past), but the actors in it are fantastic.