JJtheTexan

I imagine if it had been a Chrono Trigger fighting game, it would be worth about 10x as much today on the collecting market. (Unless it had been a best-seller or something)

@Azuris I like your thinking, though those sprites were drawn to be viewed from an overhead isometric angle. Perhaps someone will create SMRPG-inspired "pre-rendered" sprites that can be dropped into this ROMhack.

One of my most-anticipated games! I cannot wait to get my hands on this. Thank you @Damo for staying on top of Earthion updates!

To me, JRPG is a useful term in much the same way as Metroidvania: it's clunky and overgeneralized, but it still gets the point across, in a broad sense, of what a player can expect. Some folks know immediately they won't be interested. "JRPG" tells me I should give the game a look.

If you're not already subscribed to Game Sack, you should be! One of the best channels on YouTube for retro games.

Very timely, considering the Mega Man Game Boy games were just recently added to the Nintendo Switch Online service.

I thought it might be a typo, but it really was a $1 funding goal. Nice!

It's a shame they can't or didn't want to port the SEGA Master System release, since that's already fully-localized and just looks nicer.

@-wc- I enjoyed Detective Pikachu and The Super Mario Bros. Movie for what they are - "junk food" entertainment for kids and the young at heart. Hardly great films, but I liked them. The recent Mortal Kombat film was OK. I felt it was really carried by Sub-Zero as opposed to the forgettable protagonist. The Sonic movies were fine, and it seems like hardcore Sonic fans are pleased by them.

The bar is pretty low, I will admit. The 1993 Super Mario movie is definitely interesting but incoherent and a poor representation of the source material. The most recent direct-to-streaming DOOM film was awful. Wing Commander was one of the worst movies I ever saw. Double Dragon was really bad. I didn't care for any of the Resident Evil movies I saw.

I haven't watched any of Uwe Boll's game-to-movie adaptations (House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, BloodRayne, Postal, Far Cry, Rampage, etc.) but it seems like they had mostly negative reviews.

I've never read a kind word about Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

So I guess my point was that it feels, to me, like gaming movies have mostly been better-received over the past several years, wtih Detective Pikachu being something of a turning point.

They couldn't do worse than the original live-action film, so I'll give this a shot. Video game movies have been much better in recent years.

@Mario500 wouldn't want any share edges at McDoland's.

Better than pachinko, I guess! (But only just barely)

I have purchased dozens of Nintendo Switch releases from Limited Run. My biggest complaint is that, as a collector with a finite budget, I have to make tough decisions on which games I will buy because I only have a few weeks to buy from Limited Run, whereas I can usually wait months or years to order a copy of games from major publishers. I don't like being forced to make this choice, and in the last couple of years I have basically given up on getting physical editions of every game that I really want.

I have never had a problem with any Limited Run merchandise I've received, but I have grown weary of their anti-consumer practices. As a collector, I used to get excited when a game I wanted was announced to be getting an LRG release; now, I cringe and wait until the last possible minute to order (if I do at all).

One thing I've found that helps is the discovery that many Limited Run games are also getting physical releases from other publishers in Asia. I check PlayAsia to see if they're taking pre-orders and go with them whenever that option is feasible.

At least MadCatz actually produced and sold its controllers, eh Rerez?

(Re: All Controller Kickstarter debacle)

I only recently learned about Matt Barry in the absolutely brilliant What We Do in the Shadows. One of the funniest shows I have EVER seen. After binging the entire first five seasons / series, my girlfriend and I are now watching through Toast of London and Year of the Rabbit.

I can't recommend Matt Barry enough to my fellow Americans. He is extremely funny and talented!

For those who think comedy is an odd choice for a Golden Axe TV adaptation: recall the ending of the arcade game. The various enemies leap out of an arcade cabinet and chase some kids around a city, followed by the heroes. It's always been a comedy! xD

I am interested for sure and willing to give it a chance. It could be fun!

Why doesn't anyone just ask the Stampers? Do they not give interviews or respond to emails?

@-wc- I like this idea. $8 USD / month seems reasonable, since that's the full-price cost of a game. I could see it being problematic with the number of rights-holders, though.

I may have read about it at the time but forgot about it over the years. Quite a surprise to learn about it again!

@-wc- Tag Tournament 2 Wii U Edition is one of the absolute best Wii U games that never made the jump. I doubt it will ever happen now. Triste.

"Alex T bags amazing 16,248,080 score"

I see what you did there, Damien.

@alexybubble ordinarily I would react with a "Huh?" but I watched a 6-hour documentary on Tokimeki Memorial by Tim Rogers, so yeah, I'm sold.

@Damo thanks. I always appreciate your willingness to reconsider!

I feel like you're being unfair to PlatinumGames with the headline. He worked there for only two years, hasn't worked there in 12 years, and his employment there has nothing whatsoever to do with the crimes of which he is accused.

@-wc- beat me to it xD

I'm very fond of this aesthetic running at 60fps. It's almost like how we "remember" those earlier games vs. how they actually played.

Oh, I thought this was a ranking of hard-to-find games, like Little Samson and Ninja Five-O. My mistake. (Har de har har)

@SuntannedDuck2 until 2018, Germany banned any depictions of Nazism / Hitler in most entertainment media, including video games. Older Wolfenstein games had Nazi symbols removed and replaced.

@Damo has TE ever done any features on the history of Nazi censorship in Germany? Could be an interesting topic!

It's a toss-up between '98 and '99 for me. I love 'em both. Probably very slightly more partial to '99 for some of its music and stages.

I never noticed it before. It looks like a rotted tree stump to me.

I love the form factor, but the price is a nonstarter for me.

SNEG has my gratitude. I recently picked up Blade of Darkness, having never played it when it originally released. It's pretty solid, and the porting team did a nice job bringing it to modern platforms! I hope SNEG and other like-minded publishers continue to find success in reviving lost games.

I guess this is a little bit like how audiocassette drives worked for older microcomputers like the Commodore 64

I love the Silpheed games on SEGA CD and PS2, and I had no idea they started on something as "primitive" as the PC-88. I will definitely pick this one up!

I absolutely love Steel Empire, and I pre-ordered the Steel Empire Chronicles physical game for Nintendo Switch earlier this year. (It's through Strictly Limited, so who knows when I'll get it.) Legend of Steel Empire looks pretty sweet, too!

Heck yes! I played both Pole Position games a lot in arcades as a kid. I wish I could somehow replicate the classic steering wheel at home.

I remember this very well from when it happened. The Spirit of Christmas video had been making the rounds online for some time by that point, so it was kind of shocking to see it had made it into something as mainstream as a video game disc.

Nintendo's trademark on "Super Mario" for all video games and related products would easily have defeated this guy's misguided idea.

Reminds me of the situation on the opposite end of the legal spectrum, when Edge Games studio founder Tim Langdell forced Namco to rename Soul Edge as Soul Blade (later Soulcalibur). He claimed, dubiously, that he owned all gaming-related trademarks to the word "Edge."

Great article! Minor correction: the Nintendo 64 released in North America in 1996. I got mine for Christmas that year.

I will also recommend Pleasure Hearts, a jaw-dropping 1999 homebrew shmup from the designer who would go on to create cult favorites Eschatos and Judgment Silversword. I played Pleasure Hearts on an MSX-2 and I was astonished by by what they were able to do with that hardware. It's REALLY fun, too!

Treasure is one of my absolute favorite developers. It pains me that they don't make new things anymore, but most of their titles still have tremendous replayability.

"For the vast majority of retro gamers, we’d recommend going with the Starter pack."

For the vast majority of gamers, I would recommend spending your money on literally anything else.

This is really neat in concept, but an outrageously poor value proposition.

This is a wild coincidence, because I played through Rondo of Blood today on my TurboGrafx-16 Mini, oblivious to the anniversary. It is a stellar game and one of my favorites in the Castlevania series.

I have Dracula X on the Wii U Virtual Console, and started playing that as well, just to compare the two. It is definitely the lesser game, but still quite good.

I think what I like the most about the four 16-bit era Castlevania games is that they are all so very different from each other (except Rondo of Blood and Dracula X). Super Castlevania IV has giant setpieces and perfectly precise control. Bloodlines looks fantastic, has great bosses, and introduces new characters. Rondo of Blood has immense replay value and a perfect challenge. All four games have absolutely phenomenal soundtracks. It really was peak Konami.

This looks terriffic! Sunsoft is doing a fine job with revisiting their classic properties of late.

My favorite tabletop electronic game was this version of Defender, which I had as a kid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wavaS-a0OBA

I still have my original Atomic Purple Game Boy Color, a Christmas gift in 1998. I was in college at the time.

I never got many GBC-exlcusive games, but it did really add new life to my existing Game Boy library.

My favorite GBC game isn't even exclusive to that platform — The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX. I still prefer it to the 2019 remake. (Tetris DX is pretty great, too.)

This is great. Another example of why the speedrunning community is so cool.

Ahh yes, Blandia, part of the series of fighting games that includes titles such as Dullia, Tedioustan, Banalia, Boringia, and Uninterestingy.

Seriously, I have to wonder if this was ever exported to international arcades in the 1990s. Imagine seeing a game with the word BLAND as the root of the title. I guess localization was still not perfected by then.

I used to get excited when a game was announced as getting a physical release through a boutique publisher like Limited Run, Strictly Limited, Super Rare, etc. Now, I just cringe and sigh heavily.

I have bought dozens of games from these publishers because I really love collecting physical editions. But I am completely fed up with the limited order windows, years-long waits for shipments, and even worse, seeing the same games go up for sale on Playasia or Best Buy or even Amazon at the same price, with no wait.

My #1 gripe with these companies is how horrible they are at communication. If they just posted regular shipment updates - even only once a month! - and perhaps made some videos or long-form posts explaining the production process and why it takes so long to fulfill orders, that would go a long way toward easing tensions and keeping customers happy.

I have three pending game orders affected by the Strictly Limited delays, nine with Limited Run, and two others with smaller companies, making 14 games I bought earlier this year that I won't get until next year. Idiots like me are part of the problem. I just wish there was an alternative, and unfortunately it has increasingly been "don't buy games, just accept the fact that you can't / won't be able to own them physically unless you support bad business practices."

Unpopular opinion: most of the rejected names aren't THAT bad, though "Xbox" is definitely superior to all of them. Regardless, it seems to have foreshadowed Microsoft's trend of giving each generation a worse name than the last: Xbox (not terrible), Xbox 360 (OK), Xbox One (what), Xbox One X (stop), Xbox Series X (PLEASE STOP)

My favorite rejected name is "P2 / Power Play." Nintendo and Sony fans would have had a field day with that one, mocking the Microsoft PP console.