KingMike

@mandlecreed A Japanese N64 cart slot would probably be easier to modify, but a USA N64 was easier to obtain and I'm also the sort that if I have to modify a retro device, I'd rather go for the most abundant version anyways.

With the amount of no-name Chinese aftermarket stuff produced these days WHO KNOWS if they are actually the worst.
@Poodlestargenerica But how can Mega Bloks be bad? They were prominently featured in the hit theatrical film Home Alone 3.

Disappointed. Article preview guy looked like Howie Mandell. It's not him?
Not unless Howie bought a Metal Slug with the money in the case.

Didn't Sega have an issue with one GPU company because one company inadvertently (or not?) spoil the other company's upcoming product reveal?
I forgot how exactly that went.

@Sketcz In doing a fan translation of the Famicom RPG Deep Dungeon III, I had to look at the game's programming to figure out how the game's mechanics even work (unless that information was hidden somewhere else, like the magic info, I could tell even with my limited Japanese that even the instruction manual wasn't divulging info on what the stats the player was offered to spend their points on even did). And also find out they were pretty busted.

I'm guessing this game is not won by slashing, perhaps in bulk repetition?

I do remember when I played through the fan translation of Vilgust for the Famicom in 2001, I had to rely on a babelfish translation of a German walkthrough for some parts.
(though the same group that did the FF4 retranslation, I can only look at both these with a rather sus opinion of the quality of the translations. )

@Spider-Kev Probably a Nintendo Power ad.
The console shown in this article is a later release, I'd say about 1993.
At least, I can only estimate that for the US, though I'd suspect the EU market to be very similar. Before that, even console came with Tetris and had what was honestly a cooler boxart, with some kind of cyborg playing the Game Boy. Of game on this box, only Tetris and Super Mario Land were around for the original.

@Uncharted2007 Game Gear required more like 50 extra batteries when you consider the battery life difference.
I'd have liked to have both when I was a kid, but I was glad for having my Game Boy.

@Gamemoose 3DS/2DS consoles can't play GBA cartridges. The only way to my knowledge that Minish Cap is playable officially on this consoles is to people registered as "3DS Ambassadors": early adapters who bought the console and registered it with Nintendo within the first few months of release, when Nintendo uncharacteristically slashed about a third off the price. They were given digital downloads of 10 GBA games (Minish Cap one of them) exclusively and 10 NES games complimentary as a reward for having presumably paid the launch price for their console.
Reportedly the GBA games were technically constructed as DS digital software masquerading as GBA games. (the only similar game, a DS game distributed digitally on 3DS, which comes to mind was an extremely limited release of Advance Wars: Days of Ruin for Club Nintendo in Japan, a game that was originally developed for but otherwise unreleased there)

@Spider-Kev I feel like there's details missing here.
From my understand, the only way The Minish Cap is officially playable on New 2DS XL is through a System Transfer of a launch 3DS Console with the 3DS Ambassador games.
My guess is that while an original GBA running an original cartridge would save the game as soon as you saved, the 3DS Ambassador would not update the save file unless the app is closed and you return to the OS menu.
Not sure what "close the system" is precisely. Turning it off? Sleep Mode? Although I think sleep mode probably should retain it, closing the app I assume would ensure the game's save data on your console is updated, if you weren't doing that step.

@smoreon Ghouls 'n Ghosts is one of the early games that has identical ROM in all regions. Such in that case, the same cartridge will play "Daimakaimura" if you run it on a Japanese console and "Ghouls 'n Ghosts" if you play it on another region console.
Genesis lockout is entirely software programming. No actual hardware protection, unlike Nintendo.

@protocol_penguin Sega didn't have "protection chips". The console itself had jumper points which allowed the software to identify what console it is.
Early games used that console ID to allow them to produce single universal ROMs which would apply region differences based on the console (or what region it thought the console was) rather than the cartridge. (so like a "Bare Knuckle" and a "Streets of Rage" cartridge are literally the same thing on the inside, despite a different label and plastic mold on the outside)
Later on Sega repurposed it for lockout.

A Game Genie is all you need.
Defeats the physical lockout.
Most software-lockout games have codes online to defeat it too.

@JackGYarwood Actually it makes quite sense to put an anti-smoking game on a console with a preteen/teen demographic.

I believe a big part of the 1998 US government lawsuit against the tobacco industry was evidence it was largely dependent on an underage audience to sustain its industry. Including aiming its marketing at them. The regulation that killed Joe Camel.

@Jhena To be honest, emulation isn't completely without benefit to publishers.
Retro collections very likely wouldn't have happened without ROM distribution showing publishers there is value in their back catalog.
To give one example, it can be argued that Final Fantasy V likely wouldn't been officially localized without that game being one of the very first targeted by fans for unofficial translation. Square had planned and dropped THREE attempts to bring that game to America prior to the fan translation. They very likely somehow saw how much the patched ROM was getting spread and considered the potential to get the PlayStation version out for the fourth chance and the first one successful to release it, followed by countless more.
(That was twice on SNES and even once through a PC port when they first announced getting into PC games. But when Eidos got involved as publisher, it would seem that they only wanted to keep FF7, the one current generation game at the time.)
FF4 was both helped and hurt by fans though. Glad it showed Square interest to keep the game available, but one of my online friends spent time comparing versions and found unfortunately even current official versions kept a few lines of bad fan-written jokes/memes/etc.

If we're not spending real money to win at the Double Dragon 3 arcade game, are we really playing?

About how widespread is the DOL-101 compared to 001?

I know people bring up non-BC Wiis, but I imagine those will be rather uncommon compared to BC Wiis, fortunately.

It's Genesis Sunset Riders, though. Hilariously realistic unforgiving dynamite range. You're getting blown away if you're in the same ZIP code when it goes off!
(compared to SNES and I think the arcade original, it was more player friendly)

Though wasn't the Genesis port just in general much more unforgiving than SNES?

@Jhena Real hardware is going to break down someday. The majority of games are going to be unavailable because of licensing, etc. (DS, 3DS and Switch games are going to break down even faster than older consoles because of cheaper manufacturing) It's great to not have to dig through boxes of carts to find a game as well as not having to do cleaning rituals for every game you want to play.
Emulation also offers more features than original hardware.

There is absolutely reasons besides "theft" to use emulators. And Nintendo's bare-effort official offerings do not compare to the quality of the fan stuff. If Nintendo cared more, they'd do something about that. But they clearly don't care enough.

I can only imagine British children playing one of Rare's games and wanting to another word or two to that title.

Glover is one of those games I hear Piko has "improved" over the original version.
Skuljagger original had a comic strip that took up almost the entirety of the instruction manual, which I guess you were supposed to read for tips.

Dragon's Lair is more significant in its regional differences. I can at least respect what the game wanted to be in its European version. The USA version deserves the zero-star bombs it gets from people who probably only played that version without even knowing there is a difference. Having any idea of the technical reason why makes me more upset than most kusoge.

Kickle Cubicle is another NES game I remember being fairly different between the USA and Japanese versions.

@Daggot Well, there are at least a couple games that do use the connection cable to use a GBA as a controller.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and Four Swords Adventures (and Pac-Man Vs. uses one of them for its asynchronized multiplayer mode, a decade before Nintendo created that term.)

I believe SFC Tenshi no Uta was Telenet's last non-pachislot game on the console.
I believe it was also the last Wolfteam game, before or as they were producing Tales of Phantasia for Namco, and we know how that went.

I've heard Joe & Mac isn't exactly an easy find complete (but maybe it was the Game Boy version, I do recall hearing of a box collector saying it was one of the harder ones to find) nor Gilligan's Island (how many people in 1990 were looking for a video game based on a 1964 sitcom?)

Didn't Daze Before Christmas originally get extremely distribution? Like only in Australia or something.
But maybe that was just one of the two versions, SNES and Mega Drive.
(one that was announced for a US release at least for SNES, but never came out. Supposedly Nintendo of America did approve the game, as has been questioned before, if it counted as a "religious" game towards NoA's acceptable content policies.)

I've read that even the engineers who made the 32X were surprised it didn't get canceled before release.

Then there was the horrifying story of the Japanese developers getting physically abused because they weren't doing as well as Tom Kalinske, so its speculately they let stuff like this happen with an agenda at embarrassing Tom over successful business practice.

@Jacoby The GBP Startup Discs are probably as valuable or more than the actual hardware at this point.

So now you can play Game Boy Color games without the color? Sweet!

Seriously though one thing it should've added is an option to emulate the effective desaturation of the original LCD. Games were definitely designed around that, which is why emulators have a setting for that.

@Guitario They can't whine about it if they didn't try to sell legitimate downloads.

@Bonggon5 Someone will have to RE the mapper.
The only GBA "games" to use a mapper were a few GBA Videos. Those went uncracked for like a decade because, who wanted to put in the effort to be able to watch Shark Tale in 160p at like 5fps, except the one person who did the research for the technical challenge?

I agree that the answer to the company being upset at illegal downloads, should be to offer legal downloads then.

@NatiaAdamo The problem I heard is that, for whatever reason, Philips decided to put the battery INSIDE the chip, making it unreachable except to people with very specific skills.

@Bro3256 I only remember hearing about a few of those on the Japanese Wii Shop. Though one of the games released being Space Manbow (Mambo?), which was supposedly one of the technically better side-scrolling shooters on the hardware (would hope so of a Konami game), would hope it would get released.
I do remember the Japanese Wii Shop even got a port of the X68000 version of Phalanx, though sold as a WiiWare game.

@Moroboshi876 I've realized now that, if the previous releases were PC-88 and PC-98, maybe it is understandable they wouldn't be translated.
(though I do recall one PC-98 fan soliciting donations from fan-translations. I would think, depending on how well they did, maybe it would be mutually beneficial for Eggconsole to hire them?)
However, I thought have read that Project Egg (by the similar name, I assume this is the same company?) HAS taken to the effort of localizing Japanese MSX games before on which ever platforms it has previously released games on, so maybe there's a chance.

Please hope The Outfoxies isn't one of those games.
Arcade fanatic LordBBH has banned that game from his channel, and after watching only a few minutes of gameplay footage, I can see why. It might be up there with Mohawk and Headphone Jack as games prone to cause motion sickness in pursuit of their technical prowess.

@mjparker77 I was so disappointed that the PlayStation port of the original wasn't released on PSOne Classics on PSN.
Yes, I've heard arguably better sequels were released on the store, but Kaz hyped us up for the original!

@Elitepatriot That was why my local store near put only the sub-$5 games out in a box. The rest behind glass.
Only trusting that nobody's going to want to get caught stealing licensed garbage.

That is a lot for Belmont's Revenge since my time. I recall paying less than that for a Castlevania Legends cart.

@Damo Did Europe get that Dawn of Sorrow reprint where the boxart is a photo of an original copy? (including repeating all the logos and stuff)

I think the differences between the Famicom and NES versions might be just a little overhyped.
Yeah, it has more visual presentation but as said "the gameplay is the same".
Yeah, it has cutscenes, but who plays Contra to watch the cutscenes more than once or twice?
Yes, some stages have animated backgrounds but unless you're a certain Australian streamer I know, you're not going to think the crazy prices the Famicom cart goes for now would justify the difference of "now the alien guts are PULSATING!".

There's games with more significant regional differences than visuals. But maybe not as popular.

@Nontendo_4DS I do remember a few years ago watching videos on a youtube channel run by a Japanese retro store. Famicom Dojo? Chameleon Club?
But I guess most people wouldn't even know that except that those stores re-stickered the carts run through their hands, and I have bought enough carts in the past to wind up with a couple of them to have passed hands enough.

I'm not sure how they are really different than most other retro game sellers in the past decade. They've all been getting pretty ridiculous in overpricing.

@MikeDiver Miner 2049er "never ported to SEGA or Nintendo systems". It got a Game Boy version.

@RetroGames It was a sequel to Rondo of Blood, yes? I wonder if that had an affect on its art design. The PC Engine I believe ran "standard" (though it was reportedly very adjustable in software) at the same base resolution as the NES/SNES (which, yes, the Genesis supported to) and also had 15-bit color definitions as the SNES.

Who made that headline photo and why are they running a '90s Super Mario Bros. ROM (reportedly dumped from a pirate multicart some years before someone redumped the game from an authentic cart)?

I wonder how many of those "fairly definite" 32X games actually came out.
Seems about as bad as the huge list of N64DD games, and only about nine of them actually made it to release.

Namco definitely boasted of its PlayStation loyalty.
One 1995 magazine ad for their PS launch lineup said something like "In this console war, it seems one side has gained an unfair advantage. Funny, we thought we were just making games."
Another one, a long informercial from a "very important business man" went over the PS launch games while also running a part about WeaponLord (not on Sony hardware, as I recall) as a "bathroom break" portion. There too, they boasted Sony called Namco because they need "games that suck-janai".

I've wondered how similar they were, also given the Game Boy games have a hexagon-based system rather than tile.
Hudson made a bunch of hex-based strategy games I believe.
Nectaris/Military Madness on TurboGrafx-16 (and some sequels) and Earth Light (and a sequel) on Super Famicom, at least.

Oh, that's the UDidIt game!

@Damo No Shadow Dancer on Master System?
I forget which is what, but I do recall between Genesis and Master System, one port was based on the arcade and the other was a new game with the same title.
Weird, it would seem the Game Gear Shinobi games have a title inconsistency. The two games are known as "The GG Shinobi" In Japan and retain the in-game titles in the west, yes? But the western boxarts drop "The GG" from the title.
Are they not Good Games?

All I recall about Psyvariar is the original version had a lengthy story in poor English that was practically impossible to read, due to both the fast text scrolling speed and that it was hard to read against the backgrounds.
https://pastebin.com/Q7gk60Xw