Dang! That was really unexpected and awesome at the same time! All that is left is Garfield: The Lost Levels and probably BreakThru. Great to see these games preserved to the public
Something very much worth noting is that the second VHS rip by GhostCorpsGen and BillytimeG features new Sega Channel exclusives that we never knew they were made avilable on the service before:
11:32 Super League (Tommy Lasorda Baseball without the endorsement of Tommy Lasorda)
13:43 The Chessmaster (Never released in cartridge format for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive)
13:59 Klondike (Currently under possesion of the National Videogame Museum: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcYE0Rp3Jto)
16:59 BreakThru! (Never released in cartridge format for the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive)
@BLAZINOAH to bring another example: some people within the emulation scene are still pissed with the author of the BigPEmu author because that particular Atari Jaguar emulator is not open source. The fact he got permission to still work on it and release it outside of the Atari 50 is a miracle but some people are still very ungrateful.
@Scollurio @KingMike i've followed Orion's work across several platforms including the Jaguar. He has proved to be a great homebrew developer over the years so i believe this is a legit project that can prove to be very useful for any aspiring homebrew developer.
@KingMike Yup, people immediatedly drew comparison with Francesca from The Krion Conuqest/Magical Doropie when looking at the character's sprite. Not a bad thing mind you
@Steel76 i would not say the Lynx versions of Asteroids and Missile Command here are mediocre. In fact, these might have been the basis for the Recharged series, as Super Missile Command has a shop feature where power-ups can be bought to bring one example.
@KingMike i think Rich Whitehouse would have loved to jump at the opportunity but unfortunately cancer is playing dirty against him. I really wish him well for his health
Sorry but if Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales (Atari Jaguar) and Super Bubsy (PC) are not included in this collection them how it can be called the "Purrfect" collection? Sure, this is a very early announcement but i hope those two are included, since those two are the more harder to find and expensive Bubsy releases.
Hold on... LuigiBlood debunked that theory about Nintendo downloading ROMs online and selling them back to consumers (https://x.com/LuigiBlood/status/1378736192875810818). If they have the NES ROMs in their archíves, why would they rely on a random online site to get the NES ROMs back?
(P.S. - Nintendo probably has some and i say SOME stuff lost, especially from their early days such as the arcade game EVR Race, but when the gigaleak occured in 2020-2021 they had various unreleased localizations and full games that were never published. I would like to think that, as a Virtual Boy fan, have a collection of unreleased ROMs stored but who knows, considering how Nintendo sees the platform).
@Diogmites Actually it is the opposite. Yuichi Toyama worked at Technosoft, Compile and Raizing/Eighting. Takehiro "Shigatake" Shiga made one of the transformations of Seven Force in Alien Soldier as part of a competition advertised in Beep Mega Drive magazine, making it his first credited gaming role under the name "T. Shiga", before making his mark at Vanillaware
@Zeebor15 to put it in simple terms more or less: After the original Atari collapsed in 1984, the console/computer division went to Jack Tramiel, becoming Atari Corporation (7800, ST, XEGS, Lynx, and Jaguar) before dissapearing in 1996 during a reverse merger with JTS. Hasbro Interactive acquired the Atari brand in 1998 and declared the Jaguar (as well as the Lynx according to Carl Forhan of Songbird Productions and former Hasbro spokeperson Jayson Hill) open platforms in 1999. Hasbro Interactive was later sold to Infogrames in the 2000s, becoming Atari Interactive.
Meanwhile, the arcade division fell into Warner Communications and became Atari Games. Between 1996-1997, Atari Games was acquired by Williams Entertainment, becoming a division of Midway Games to get them out of the competition and was eventually closed in 2003 IIRC. After Midway fell into bankruptcy, Warner Bros acquired the full IP library of Midway and Atari Games, but they have done nothing with the Atari Games IP outside of Gauntlet.
@Steel76 @Zeebor15 I'm afraid that Astrosmash and Shark Shark were not in that adquisition, since Tommy Tallarico sold the rights to those two games to another company. It's up to Atari to rescue those IPs and bring them back under the Intellivision umbrella
The Atari Video Music seemed like a cool piece of music hardware but if i am being honest, i believe Jeff Minter nailed it with Virtual Light Machine 1 for the Jaguar CD.
Very cool article about Virtuality. They were really ahead of the curve with their VR units. It sucks though that none of the games made vy Virtuality have been remade or re-released on modern platforms.
I think the Jaguar VR, as cool as it might have been, ate up resources Atari desperately needed for the Jaguar. The games Virtuality were slated to make for the Jaguar VR (Zone Hunter, Buggy Ball, Dactyl Nightmare, Exorex, Space Invaders VR, and Classic Trax) could have been reworked to function without the units. Heck, they did it with Missile Command 3D.
I believe Atari should have tasked them with adapting their arcade games to the Jaguar using the ProController and perhaps we might have still seen the games Virtuality had planned for the Jaguar. That's just My two cents on the matter...
(P.S. Simon Marston should really make about a book about the history of Virtuality and their games, featuirng interviews with former Virtuality devs )
@smoreon i could be wrong but i think Eek the Cat shares the same sound drive used in Waterworld and the unreleased Green Lantern for SNES: the SNES OctaMed.
@BionicDodo Hmmm... That reminds me of a certain Atari "expert" author online, since he does that kind of stuff in online stores selling his poor-quality books with multiple accounts
So the engine targets platforms with the Motorola 68000... I wonder how hard it would be for the author to tailor the engine for the Atari Jaguar and X68000, since those are other platforms with the Motorola 68000 chip.
Although i would love to see the Total Eclipse and Solar Eclipse shooters being re-released as well if Evercade is going to do more Crystal Dynamics releases
@RetroGames Sorry but if you're copying, say Rich Whitehouse's work with his Atari Jaguar emulator BigPEmu down to the last minutes detail without crediting him within the ported version of said emulator, then you are disrespecting his labor.
That's why i don't feel bad this GBA emulator was taken down from the iOS. You're a scumbag if you don't credit the original authors, IMO.
Is there anyway way to give Darran Jones suggestions for future "Making of" articles? I want to give him really good suggestions that would be really cool, as i am a fan and avid reader of the magazine 🙂
@JDulay well i would love to be proven wrong without issues. The only way i can see the game on the Jaguar is being 2D or something akin like the abandoned Atari Owl homebrew project: https://youtu.be/g4K7ABfzMeA?si=ILXpgZK5ZFx_CMtE
OK, even as a hardcore fan of the Atari Jaguar will admit that there is no way in hell the Game will run on the console XD The team probably doesn't know what kind of nasty hardware bugs are inside the Jaguar.
@RetroGames your 8bpp theory is simply not feasible, mainly because detailed visuals at that kind of bitrate fidelity would eat the SNES RAM like crazy. I would say to Eric that he better take his time in learning the SNES hardware slowly but surely to harness its features properly. If it does become a legit SNES game, i'll gladly look foward to it
@Poodlestargenerica well, i think it doesn't hurt supporting the official North American release of the Game. It's a pretty darn cool game for the SNES
That third publisher who wanted the game might have been Atari Corporation, as David Swan (another Perfect Entertainment member) recalled in a interview that Atari approached them regarding Discworld for the Jaguar.
I hope Hamster can re-release arcades games like Metamorphic Force, Violent Storm, Gaiapolis, the original arcade version of Cotton, Air Gallet, Sailor Moon, Raiden II, Over Heat (akak Konami Avenue), Cisco Heat, P-47 Aces, the two Irem Bomberman arcade games, as well as the other remaining Neo Geo games that's haven't been re-released via ACA such as Neo Bomberman, Andro Dunos, Goal Goal Goal, Tecno World Cup 96, Bang Bead, Ganryu, Neo Drift Out, Ironclad, etc.
It's insane that Hamster has kept a weekly schedule after these years!
@Serpenterror Now that you bring it up, last year i decided to play Virtual Boy Wario Land on real hardware that i still have since 6th grade. At first, the left part of the system began displaying graphical errors so i thought i needed to replace pieces of that part.
Over the course of 2-3 dyas or so, i noticed that the left graphical errors stopped appearing. It might have been because it was years since I played on the console. I know that the VB is a delicate piece of hardware but your comment reminded me of what occurred to me so, i dediced to share that story of mine
@Sketcz I read a comment by one of the guys working on the MSX translation on Twitter, saying that the text in the Mega CD version is almost identical as the one in the original MSX release. So, there's a real possibility that we might see the Mega CD port (and maybe the PC-98 and X68000 ports) translated to English in the future
@MoriyaMug in the case someone else decides to translate the PS1 and Saturn versions using your work on the Neo Geo CD as basis, would you give the team the A-OK?
By the way, congratulations for the release of the English fan translation
It's always worth mentioning the homebrew scene for the Jaguar, which is still going strong since 1995! Yeah, one of the very first homebrews for the Jaguar was JSTetris by Bastian Schick. After Hasbro declared the Jaguar as a open platform in 1999, the homebrew floodgates pretty much opened wide
@John_Deacon Yup, that's pretty much the mindset i have with the Genesis and SNES, as well as other consoles. In the end, we the players ended up winning due to the sheer number of games we have to play until the end of times 🙂
Comments 111
Re: "Maybe One Day We Could Work With Nintendo" - Bitmap Books On Staying Small And Ambitious
It would be cool seeing a Nintendo book by Bitmap but i don't think it will happen in this timeline, if i'm being honest...
Re: Two Lost Sega Channel Games Have Been Found And Preserved
Dang! That was really unexpected and awesome at the same time! All that is left is Garfield: The Lost Levels and probably BreakThru. Great to see these games preserved to the public
Re: You Can Now Rediscover A Forgotten Piece Of PlayStation History, Thanks To Antstream Arcade
I hope Hover Racing eventually comes to Antstream. By far the best and most feature rich 3D game made for the Net Yaroze, in my opinion.
Re: Revisit Sega's Groundbreaking Sega Channel Service With These Newly-Preserved Videos
Something very much worth noting is that the second VHS rip by GhostCorpsGen and BillytimeG features new Sega Channel exclusives that we never knew they were made avilable on the service before:
Re: Creator Of PS1 Emulator DuckStation Threatens To "Shut The Whole Thing Down" Following License Change
@BLAZINOAH to bring another example: some people within the emulation scene are still pissed with the author of the BigPEmu author because that particular Atari Jaguar emulator is not open source. The fact he got permission to still work on it and release it outside of the Atari 50 is a miracle but some people are still very ungrateful.
Re: Retro Game Designer Will Let You Create Games For Dreamcast, Genesis, GBA, PS1 And Jaguar
@Scollurio don't worry! I'm no shill XD i'm just merely a follower of Orion's work over the years
Re: Retro Game Designer Will Let You Create Games For Dreamcast, Genesis, GBA, PS1 And Jaguar
@Scollurio @KingMike i've followed Orion's work across several platforms including the Jaguar. He has proved to be a great homebrew developer over the years so i believe this is a legit project that can prove to be very useful for any aspiring homebrew developer.
Re: Can You Match These Start Buttons With Their Consoles?
24 out of 25 in two minutes! The Game Gear screwed me over XD
Re: The Dev Behind Mega Man Fangame 'The Sequel Wars' Is Working On A SNES Game
@KingMike Yup, people immediatedly drew comparison with Francesca from The Krion Conuqest/Magical Doropie when looking at the character's sprite. Not a bad thing mind you
Re: Can You Match These Consoles With Their Controller Ports?
17/18. The PSOne screwed me over XD some were more obvious to me than other where i had to double guess without looking in San Google.
Re: Atari's Super Asteroids & Missile Command Are Being Reissued For Lynx
@Steel76 i would not say the Lynx versions of Asteroids and Missile Command here are mediocre. In fact, these might have been the basis for the Recharged series, as Super Missile Command has a shop feature where power-ups can be bought to bring one example.
Re: Limited Run Is Reviving Bubsy, Fear Effect And Fighting Force In New Collections
@KingMike i think Rich Whitehouse would have loved to jump at the opportunity but unfortunately cancer is playing dirty against him. I really wish him well for his health
Re: Limited Run Is Reviving Bubsy, Fear Effect And Fighting Force In New Collections
Sorry but if Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales (Atari Jaguar) and Super Bubsy (PC) are not included in this collection them how it can be called the "Purrfect" collection? Sure, this is a very early announcement but i hope those two are included, since those two are the more harder to find and expensive Bubsy releases.
Re: A Copy Of The Lost Famicom Title Moeyo Butaman Has Been Found
@Sketcz I think another good outcome would be if Columbus Circle released the game as a post-release for the Famicom
Re: Talking Point: Is Nintendo Erasing Its Own History In Its War On ROM Sites?
Hold on... LuigiBlood debunked that theory about Nintendo downloading ROMs online and selling them back to consumers (https://x.com/LuigiBlood/status/1378736192875810818). If they have the NES ROMs in their archíves, why would they rely on a random online site to get the NES ROMs back?
(P.S. - Nintendo probably has some and i say SOME stuff lost, especially from their early days such as the arcade game EVR Race, but when the gigaleak occured in 2020-2021 they had various unreleased localizations and full games that were never published. I would like to think that, as a Virtual Boy fan, have a collection of unreleased ROMs stored but who knows, considering how Nintendo sees the platform).
Re: Devil Blade And Aleste Devs Share Fan Art Of Each Other's Games
@Diogmites Actually it is the opposite. Yuichi Toyama worked at Technosoft, Compile and Raizing/Eighting. Takehiro "Shigatake" Shiga made one of the transformations of Seven Force in Alien Soldier as part of a competition advertised in Beep Mega Drive magazine, making it his first credited gaming role under the name "T. Shiga", before making his mark at Vanillaware
Re: In 1989, A Teenage Atari ST Dev Made One Award-Winning Game Then Vanished - What Happened?
It's good to know that the game's author is doing well in life
Re: Atari Purchases The Intellivision Brand, But Not The Delayed Amico Console
@Zeebor15 to put it in simple terms more or less: After the original Atari collapsed in 1984, the console/computer division went to Jack Tramiel, becoming Atari Corporation (7800, ST, XEGS, Lynx, and Jaguar) before dissapearing in 1996 during a reverse merger with JTS. Hasbro Interactive acquired the Atari brand in 1998 and declared the Jaguar (as well as the Lynx according to Carl Forhan of Songbird Productions and former Hasbro spokeperson Jayson Hill) open platforms in 1999. Hasbro Interactive was later sold to Infogrames in the 2000s, becoming Atari Interactive.
Meanwhile, the arcade division fell into Warner Communications and became Atari Games. Between 1996-1997, Atari Games was acquired by Williams Entertainment, becoming a division of Midway Games to get them out of the competition and was eventually closed in 2003 IIRC. After Midway fell into bankruptcy, Warner Bros acquired the full IP library of Midway and Atari Games, but they have done nothing with the Atari Games IP outside of Gauntlet.
Re: Atari Purchases The Intellivision Brand, But Not The Delayed Amico Console
@Steel76 @Zeebor15 I'm afraid that Astrosmash and Shark Shark were not in that adquisition, since Tommy Tallarico sold the rights to those two games to another company. It's up to Atari to rescue those IPs and bring them back under the Intellivision umbrella
Re: "Most Of My Engineers Were Stoned" - Nolan Bushnell On The Failure Of Atari Video Music
The Atari Video Music seemed like a cool piece of music hardware but if i am being honest, i believe Jeff Minter nailed it with Virtual Light Machine 1 for the Jaguar CD.
Re: Feature: The Forgotten Satellaview Sequel To Famicom Detective Club
Like with the other lost Fanbyte article, some kind soul was smart enough to post a link to the original article. Here is the archived version of that article to avoid getting lost in the sands of time: https://wayback-api.archive.org/web/20220408174831/https://www.fanbyte.com/features/lost-memories-in-the-snow-the-forgotten-famicom-detective-club-sequel/
Re: Virtuality Gave Us '90s VR - Now Its Legacy Is Being Celebrated In Its Home City Of Leicester
Very cool article about Virtuality. They were really ahead of the curve with their VR units. It sucks though that none of the games made vy Virtuality have been remade or re-released on modern platforms.
I think the Jaguar VR, as cool as it might have been, ate up resources Atari desperately needed for the Jaguar. The games Virtuality were slated to make for the Jaguar VR (Zone Hunter, Buggy Ball, Dactyl Nightmare, Exorex, Space Invaders VR, and Classic Trax) could have been reworked to function without the units. Heck, they did it with Missile Command 3D.
I believe Atari should have tasked them with adapting their arcade games to the Jaguar using the ProController and perhaps we might have still seen the games Virtuality had planned for the Jaguar. That's just My two cents on the matter...
(P.S. Simon Marston should really make about a book about the history of Virtuality and their games, featuirng interviews with former Virtuality devs )
Re: Dean Evan's Spectacular Waterworld SNES OST Is Being Released On Vinyl
@smoreon i could be wrong but i think Eek the Cat shares the same sound drive used in Waterworld and the unreleased Green Lantern for SNES: the SNES OctaMed.
Re: "I'd Hoped I Would Become The Next Elton John" - Remembering The Vaporwave Bliss Of Tetris CD-i
Don't mind me if i do but for completeness sake, here's a link to the original Fanbyte interview: https://web.archive.org/web/20200922173005/https://www.fanbyte.com/features/before-tetris-effect-there-was-the-vaporwave-bliss-of-tetris-on-the-cd-i/
Re: New Book Aims To Celebrate Saturn, Sega's Beloved 32-Bit Console
@BionicDodo Hmmm... That reminds me of a certain Atari "expert" author online, since he does that kind of stuff in online stores selling his poor-quality books with multiple accounts
Re: The Game Creation Kit 'Scorpion Engine' Adds Neo Geo Support
So the engine targets platforms with the Motorola 68000... I wonder how hard it would be for the author to tailor the engine for the Atari Jaguar and X68000, since those are other platforms with the Motorola 68000 chip.
Re: Tomb Raider "Giga Cart" Confirmed For Evercade, More Crystal Dynamics Collections Coming
It's tail time for Gex XD
Although i would love to see the Total Eclipse and Solar Eclipse shooters being re-released as well if Evercade is going to do more Crystal Dynamics releases
Re: Game Boy Emulator That Topped iPhone App Store Gets Yanked For Copyright Infringement
@RetroGames Sorry but if you're copying, say Rich Whitehouse's work with his Atari Jaguar emulator BigPEmu down to the last minutes detail without crediting him within the ported version of said emulator, then you are disrespecting his labor.
That's why i don't feel bad this GBA emulator was taken down from the iOS. You're a scumbag if you don't credit the original authors, IMO.
Re: Hands On: Xeno Crisis On SNES Really Is A Dream Come True
All i want to see now regarding Xeno Crisis is a Atari Jaguar port... Well that and the PS1 and GBA ports that were teased in Debug magazine.
Re: "I Spent The First Year Worrying I'd Get Replaced" - Retro Gamer Magazine Turns 20
Is there anyway way to give Darran Jones suggestions for future "Making of" articles? I want to give him really good suggestions that would be really cool, as i am a fan and avid reader of the magazine 🙂
Re: Interview: "A True Original" - Digital Eclipse On 'Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story'
@Mayhem wasn't mentioned in a interview?
Re: Interview: "A True Original" - Digital Eclipse On 'Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story'
The only letdown i seen with the lineup of the Llamasoft collection is not the lack of Tempest 3000 but the exclusion of Defender 2000 😔
Re: JRPG 'Breath Of Thunder' Could Come To The Jaguar, Saturn, N64 And (Reads Notes) Virtual Boy
@JDulay well i would love to be proven wrong without issues. The only way i can see the game on the Jaguar is being 2D or something akin like the abandoned Atari Owl homebrew project: https://youtu.be/g4K7ABfzMeA?si=ILXpgZK5ZFx_CMtE
Re: JRPG 'Breath Of Thunder' Could Come To The Jaguar, Saturn, N64 And (Reads Notes) Virtual Boy
OK, even as a hardcore fan of the Atari Jaguar will admit that there is no way in hell the Game will run on the console XD The team probably doesn't know what kind of nasty hardware bugs are inside the Jaguar.
Re: Upcoming ADV 'Detective Instinct' May Be Getting A SNES Port
@RetroGames your 8bpp theory is simply not feasible, mainly because detailed visuals at that kind of bitrate fidelity would eat the SNES RAM like crazy. I would say to Eric that he better take his time in learning the SNES hardware slowly but surely to harness its features properly. If it does become a legit SNES game, i'll gladly look foward to it
Re: Collector Finds Rare Philips CD-i Hotel Mario Prototype In Goodwill
@ArcadianLegend99 Oh great, it's the Panel de Pon 64 scenario all over again :/
Re: Retro-Bit Bringing SNES Cult Classic 'Majyūō - King Of Demons' To The West For The First Time
@Poodlestargenerica well, i think it doesn't hurt supporting the official North American release of the Game. It's a pretty darn cool game for the SNES
Re: Interview: "John Cleese Told Us To F**k Off" - The Inside Story Of Terry Pratchett's Discworld Games
That third publisher who wanted the game might have been Atari Corporation, as David Swan (another Perfect Entertainment member) recalled in a interview that Atari approached them regarding Discworld for the Jaguar.
https://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/david-swan-interview/
Re: Arcade Archives Officially Hits 400 Titles Released
I hope Hamster can re-release arcades games like Metamorphic Force, Violent Storm, Gaiapolis, the original arcade version of Cotton, Air Gallet, Sailor Moon, Raiden II, Over Heat (akak Konami Avenue), Cisco Heat, P-47 Aces, the two Irem Bomberman arcade games, as well as the other remaining Neo Geo games that's haven't been re-released via ACA such as Neo Bomberman, Andro Dunos, Goal Goal Goal, Tecno World Cup 96, Bang Bead, Ganryu, Neo Drift Out, Ironclad, etc.
It's insane that Hamster has kept a weekly schedule after these years!
Re: Here's Tomb Raider Running On The Sega 32X
It'll be a matter of time we'll see an Atari Jaguar port of Tomb Raider. XProger could do both a cartridge or a CD version with the FMV cutscenes 🙂
Re: Does Your SNES Have A Ticking Time Bomb Inside?
@Serpenterror Now that you bring it up, last year i decided to play Virtual Boy Wario Land on real hardware that i still have since 6th grade. At first, the left part of the system began displaying graphical errors so i thought i needed to replace pieces of that part.
Over the course of 2-3 dyas or so, i noticed that the left graphical errors stopped appearing. It might have been because it was years since I played on the console. I know that the VB is a delicate piece of hardware but your comment reminded me of what occurred to me so, i dediced to share that story of mine
Re: Saturn Fans Can Now Play The Ultimate Version Of Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night
@1040STF @Sketcz Everybody can say what they want about the original PS1 voice acting, but i do legit love Robert Belgrade as Alucard.
Re: MSX Cyberpunk RPG 'Illusion City' Finally Gets An English Translation
@Sketcz I read a comment by one of the guys working on the MSX translation on Twitter, saying that the text in the Mega CD version is almost identical as the one in the original MSX release. So, there's a real possibility that we might see the Mega CD port (and maybe the PC-98 and X68000 ports) translated to English in the future
Re: "My White Whale Has Finally Been Slain" - Samurai Shodown RPG Translation Is Live
@MoriyaMug in the case someone else decides to translate the PS1 and Saturn versions using your work on the Neo Geo CD as basis, would you give the team the A-OK?
By the way, congratulations for the release of the English fan translation
Re: Did You Know SNES Street Fighter II Is Missing A Key Feature Of The Arcade Original?
@ValZ i think it was the Majesco Genesis 3 unit but i could be wrong.
Re: Anniversary: The Atari Jaguar Is 30 Years Old
It's always worth mentioning the homebrew scene for the Jaguar, which is still going strong since 1995! Yeah, one of the very first homebrews for the Jaguar was JSTetris by Bastian Schick. After Hasbro declared the Jaguar as a open platform in 1999, the homebrew floodgates pretty much opened wide
Re: The Making Of: Mario Artist: Paint Studio, The Japan-Exclusive Mario Paint Successor
What a fantastic interview! It's always great to know more info about the N64DD games
Re: Zanac, Aleste And Gunhed Devs Join Forces For NES Shmup 'Chouyoku Senki Estique'
Truly, this looks to be one of the best homebrew games for the Famicom
Re: Molyneux And Minter - The Story Of The Lost GameCube Exclusive 'Unity'
I really do wish Unity came out for the GameCube. With Minter's eccentricity, it would have been one of the most unique titles for the console
I really do hope we see a playable build of Unity someday...
Re: Gunstar Heroes Developer Treasure On Why Mega Drive Is Better Than SNES
@John_Deacon Yup, that's pretty much the mindset i have with the Genesis and SNES, as well as other consoles. In the end, we the players ended up winning due to the sheer number of games we have to play until the end of times 🙂