KingMike

@Nahhhtendo Well, when it is a "professional" magazine writing about a Japanese game and clearly not making any attempt at getting the game title correct, that is a different thing than Taz-speak.
Never seen such a thing out of EGM, who'd sometimes make up names but at least make up plausible names.

@Lovelime "Mr. Mister" That's not a very good name, this device seems to lack wings of any state.

I recall looking forward to that Mega Man collection as much as the PS2 Phantasy Star Collection. (reportedly Sega was going to bundle the PS2 remakes together, as Sony America would've dictated according to reports about their feelings about 2D gaming, but that would've entailed a desire for a Phantasy Star IV remake, which who knows if Sega was ever planning that)
I believe Sega did eventually release a collection on the Sega Ages line in Japan but I assume that was just emulation ports of the original four games. We sort of got that with the Sega Genesis Collection, yes?)

I seem to recall at one point Capcom even took preorders for the GBA game on their own online store. (I'm pretty sure my physical copy of Ultimate Ghouls 'n Ghosts on PSP came from them.)

Gauntlet was the first game I played emulated, before I even knew what emulators were. I had gone to a computer liquidation sale and I was not yet wise enough to consider some of the software sold on disks may not exactly be legally compliant.
So I bought a floppy disk with Neill Corlette's Gauntlet emulator with the ROMs included (despite including Neill's readme saying he couldn't legally include them).

Was Seven Sorrows released? I know there is a ROM going around for a DS Gauntlet game that reportedly was never officially released, and I thought it was that but maybe it was a different game.

Typing a bunch of random letters as the name doesn't sound particularly "hilarious". I understand people weren't so considerate in the '90s but it's not really "funny" to bring up again.
Also, is that GameFan, the same magazine that was previously reportedly to have had, like, a Madden review or something where the writer wrote a really racist thing to their friend as "filler" text then forgot to replace the text with the actual game review before it went to print? It could've been GamePro, but I've heard stories about the GameFan writers. I also heard reports that their review of Cybermorph for the Jaguar was written while under heavy narcotics influence, according to one of the streamers I watch who did a read through of that full issue once.

@snk2d4life As I understand the original Xbox had a problem with the clock battery exploding and damaging the components around it.

I remember reading about this and it seemed like a game that was never going to get released. Was shocked when it finally made it out on DS.

@bring_on_branstons I thought Sega released multiple Sonic themed children's attractions that were primarily ride with limited interactive element.
I know one streamer I watch his made part of his stream intro footage of playing a popcorn popper in MAME, though giving an error message when obviously MAME cannot replicate the FULL functionality of the device.

@ch37x From what I've seen, at most archive.org can block public access to the files, but identifying (through legal registration) as a preservation organization gives them the right to host the files.

This would have still been over a year before Secret of Mana.

But it's probably forgotten because Nintendo seems to have forgotten much of the HAL catalog that isn't Kirby. I think only Lolo has gotten rerelease.

Supposedly Nintendo took them as a second party after the visual novel Metal Slader Glory for the Famicom reportedly financially ruined them less than a year before this game.

I suppose people don't know at one point the PAL Rod-Land was considered the rarest and most valuable of the commercially released PAL NES games. Now I'm sure it's been overtaken in value easily.
Some people said the game was only released in Spain. I know a couple of the rarest PAL SNES games are, despite being English localizations of Japanese games, are said to have only received Spanish release.
The Famicom version was much easier to obtain though.

I'd be down for a Game Gear Mini that isn't the size of a postage stamp.

It could sit right there with the NBA Jam SNES "beta" (a joke version more than serious development) known as NBA Jam XXX to the fans where the announcer is like "He's on f***** fire!" and "Get that s*** out of here!".
In real life, he has to deny any involvement and claim it a fake game.

And yes, the only TurboForce I read is that issue above, which I believe was given away as a preview within one issue of... EGM?. As you might be able to tell by not having a UPC code on the front. (kind of a necessary thing so you could buy the magazine at the store.)

Kind of surprised at that relaunched Electronic Games, as it is at least from the same publisher as EGM (and even advertised by them). Seems kind of redundant?

EGM did produce two single-format publications which I think ran at least a couple years each. Super NES Buyer's Guide and Mega Play.
As you might guess the former was an all-SNES magazine and the latter devoted to Sega consoles (though I didn't have any so I didn't read it new, I'm going to guess it went over Genesis/Sega CD and Game Gear?)

@Sketcz Wow, what did those writers think to find that many of those "homegrown" English games were infact Japanese in origin?
Many license shovelware NES games could have as well been developed by Rare as by Atlus.
Or worse, by either Micronics or Imagineering. If you need two companies of different nationalities but about equal crappiness.

I don't know about the UK perspective, but I don't think VG&CE was that "forgotten" in the US.
It had a pretty long run, if you consider that in 1993 it was rebranded to just "VideoGames", focusing on console content and dropping the computer gaming stuff.
Then in 1994 it launched its successor publication Tips & Tricks, which like the name says focused on strategy guides and cheats, that magazine far outlasted the original publication.

Though I swear I've seen that exact battle UI in some licensed-based RPG probably by Bandai or one of its other brands (Shinsei, Angel, Yutaka).

@sdelfin I'm fairly certain a baseball game is the only thing Namco saw to release on the Famicom in 1993, to put that in comparison.
Splatterhouse 2 was 1990, though 3 was 1993. However, I can't remember if Splatterhouse 3 got international release or just North America (as Rolling Thunder 3 did that same year).

The Famicom was just too dead by 1993. Namco might have published the most games of any third-party (at least of favored companies, I hadn't the urge to look into how much slop Bandai, let alone Bandai plus its affliliates/alter egos, or Pony Canyon put out ).
But even Namco I believe saw to put out only one Famicom game in 1993, of course a Famista game (that's baseball for those who don't recognize it).

@MS7000 I wonder if people were bothering him too much to finish.
I heard him once speak of someone who attended a convention in order to annoy him in person.

Well, it did dominate the Saturn, even in former strong Sega territory of Europe, if only by selling less pitifully.

Probably because Apple would've known that, especially as a big company, if they weren't going to go to the extent of making it properly licensed, don't risk action from The Tetris Company.
TTC probably can't go after every homebrew dev who ports it unauthorized, but they sure would attack a major company selling a big name product.

I'd be interested if I didn't have a Retrode.
The two things I know the Retrode doesn't handle with SNES is SA-1 carts (I think the original author said they didn't support because of fear of legal action from Nintendo over what would have been necessary to unlock the chip's additional antipiracy functions) and Nintendo Power (SF Memory) carts (apparently it worked in one firmware update but was removed in the final for being buggy. It wasn't easy for me to swap the firmware because I recall the officially supported flasher program required me to dig out my zombie Windows XP laptop.

I think Pokemon will be a much more difficult game to play without the Start button. (though Select is pretty convenient)

@AuburnGamer If it's the emulator I'm thinking of... Pinball Dreams got a series of ports that are the only licensed games (barring some Japanese games with esoteric peripherals) I'm aware of that are unplayable on nearly every emulator. I think think it was not until like 2016 that some emulator got whatever minute detail of the hardware those games are dependent to not crash upon entering gameplay.
It HAS to be something specific, you look at these games and they don't seem anything special.

I hadn't heard of this console until learning that prior to Switch, this was literally the only other console Super BurgerTime had ever been ported to.
I hadn't heard of that game and didn't know if it was a new game or not.

@Damo There were McDonalds games before MC Kids, on Nintendo hardware even.
Data East made a game Donald Land, released in Japan in 1988.

This whole thing sounds like an advertisement against crowdfunding.
Create a fundraiser to compensate people burned by a previous fundraiser? Something the legal system is supposed to take care of? That should have at least raised a "do not support this company again" flag for people who donated.

Too much hardware?
The SuperGrafx: it extends your PCE library by 5.75 games. But apparently the killer app was to have the best port of Ghouls 'n Ghosts since the Genesis.
However, the Power Console was announced and while it may have never been released, it had become a meme among people who knew it. Essentially imagine the Steel Battalion controller but in 1989 and even more expensive (don't know how to calculate exactly the inflation rate, but it was probably about $600 in 1989 money!)

@NinChocolate Indeed as said, composite wasn't a high demand in the US until DVD players took off in the late '90s and early 2000s. Before that most people used RF, and when most if not all DVD players lacked RF output, people had a need to buy RF modulators to connect them to their older or lower-end TVs that lacked them (I know my mom had bought a couple RCA TVs in the mid '90s that were our most used. One more expensive one that had composite, and another cheaper one in 1997 to replace another TV, and that one lacked composite. Just predating that DVD bubble.)

Though I do wonder about the TeraDrive. Seems that was an actual IBM machine sold in Japan. I wonder how compatible that was? I know NEC's computers were similar, but I don't think they were compatible, were they? I know you could install Windows on NEC machines, but would the software still work regardless if it was written for a NEC or IBM machine?

@_NetNomad I'd imagine they'd be similar to IBM, who NEC was so clearly trying to imitate. FAR too expensive for the typical home user, like probably almost any '80s IBM or Apple computer. But from what I hear, Japan had far less space so more than likely once the machines had served their business purpose, I'd guess they were more likely scrapped than IBMs were in America.

@KitsuneNight It's very easy in retrospect to say the Sony business model of taking a hit on hardware sales to boost console ownership to boost software sales, was what they should've done.
But still, when the 3DO Company asked hardware manufacturers to license it, where were Panasonic, LG and Sanyo (did theirs ever get release?) going to get any money if they didn't expect to turn a hardware profit? I don't think Panasonic originally planned to sell software, only going that route after about a year. (well, Panasonic did have experience selling MSX hardware, but then the MSX was a computer so it had more potential value to the consumer since it was programmable device than one that could only play prewritten software. An angle Jack Tramiel apparently didn't think about trying to sell Jaguars like they were Commodores.)

@Poodlestargenerica Yeah, I can't imagine that tracking down the seller to ask them for more deals being something a wholesome person does.
I know that whenever I get to play some Saturn games, I'll be playing some Shining Wisdom through the Japanese copy I paid about a dollar-fifty for some years ago. (I'm going to guess that playing Magic Knight Rayearth, saving not only the massive amount of cost in regional difference will be great... but maybe experiencing it without Vic's writing? )

@PKDuckman Last I knew, GameStop was only selling retro games through their website (which even then, became highly scrutinized about GameStop's ability to detect fakes) and not in stores. Last time I checked out one local store last year, that store was barely even selling any video games anymore, it was mostly a merchandise store at that point.

The only King's Quest I played as a child was Mixed-Up Mother Goose, which was like a toddler version of the game.
On the daycare's Tandy of some kind.
Uh... the Tandy 1000 was a clone of the IBM PC Jr.? I guess RadioShack saw more market potential in that then IBM did.

@GhaleonUnlimited From what I understand, how the NES Zapper even worked is that, after the trigger was pressed, the game software would expect the gun to sense a blank frame for one frame (dispelling the rumor that you could point the Zapper directly at a lit light bulb to register a hit every time), before the game cycles through a process of blanking out the screen except for placing white box over each of the possible targets for one frame. Which frame the Zapper registered a hit would indicate which target would be registered by the software. (the NES Zapper tech apparently primitive enough it could only sense whether or not it hit "something" but not what, apparently even the Master System gun released a couple years later had some ability to detect screen position)
The problem is that the NES Zapper games had that timing corresponding to CRTs, I would guess a patch would update the timing to reflect something friendlier to modern TVs.

"Retro Family Computer" is someone hedging their bets on how much Nintendo will care. Almost certainly Nintendo would still have the name Family Computer trademarked.
Though taking another look, while I have no understanding of the Chinese on the linked website... this looks to be someone selling consoles using modified genuine PCBs.

@DoorToMundane Still, wouldn't it be a lot cheaper to crush a fake cabinet?
Just grab a few planks and some paint from the hardware store and slab them together to construct a prop cabinet.

That is the kind of practice that can and should get them sued but won't because it's not going to be a big enough nature for a lawyer to care.
But what do you expect when the CEO was clueless enough to encourage people to play Pac-Man on that new VCS without Bandai-Namco authorization?

@TransmitHim I've heard some of the BS F-Zero 2 tracks (the only dump available is a practice version containing just one League, or five of the game's tracks) were reused in F-Zero 99, a game that will itself probably sooner than later just as Super Mario 35 did.

Releasing the 32X was Sega's first mistake of that era. Even when it was new, people thought buying that was going to be a waste of money.

Fighter and Attacker sure was a game to play for the reason stated by the Credit Inserted lady, "GET DOWN, EVERYONE!" (the tunes)

@Damo That cartridge slot looks like it wouldn't fit a retail cartridge inside it, if any retail cartridges would even function. Not sure that any person who would bid on this would intend to ever test that out and risk blowing something.

I don't know, if that copy of Sonic the Hedgehog was a For Resale USA Genesis copy, that might be a little scarce. I estimate Sega sold about five copies and gave away about a billion NFR copies.

@BulkSlash Protos are already supposedly illegitimate to sell on ebay. I remember about a decade ago reading on forums about ebay taking down a number of proto auctions (leading to some funny listings working around it. I remember one selling a broken pen and said it was still good for pointing, such as pointing to a Emerald Dragon SFC proto board they'd include as a free bonus if you bought the seller's very expensive dead pen).

Though I once got an ebay support rep on chat and they left as soon as I pointed out the "Reproduction" instruction manual sub-category on the Video Games section, when I asked them if ebay was aware "Reproduction" is mostly code for counterfeit.

The Switch was such a huge success that unfortunately Nintendo's history means they'll probably get confident on selling on their brand name again and let it flop.

@Damo Reportedly 100k 64DD drives were made, but the unsold were scrapped.

I have not heard of an Exa Arcadia until being informed on an arcade-heavy stream channel that it is an extremely expensive arcade console such that you may be unlikely to ever play one, at home or in an arcade. They were saying the console costs about $4000 (which, yes, is cheaper than what I've heard some arcade machines originally cost) but the games cost like $1600 apiece, which I would guess is where they expect to make their money.