Razieluigi

Hey, look at that. Maybe in a few more decades, they can fnish their own history and finally update the Pocket to include the features they promised 5 years ago and haven't yet delivered.

Or they can just spend all their time perfecting different colors of translucent plastic. That's just as good.

@Sketcz Especially as a mega-fan of FF VI, the hype was intense.

Still had a great experience despite the fumbles, and I've played it multiple times since. It's one of those games where I like the characters and world a little more than the game itself (I've never loved the Materia system, honestly), but it's a classic for a reason.

I'll always have a soft spot for VR on the Genesis. It's remarkable that it's as good as it is, and it's a cool bit of history being the only game to use the SVP chip.

That said, nowadays the Switch port is where its at. I love how well these simple, untextured polygonal graphics lend themselves to upscaling.

Not directly related to the current Steam version, but this brings back memories of trying to play this game when it was finally released on PC back in '98. I didn't have a PlayStation, so I was crazy excited about finally getting to play this.

Everything went fine until the Chocobo race, which would just crash my computer every single time. And there's one mandatory race, so this was game-breaking.

In those days, PC gaming generally meant spending 80% of your time troubleshooting and 20% of your time actually playing games, so I was used to this kind of nonsense. But I tried everything and just could not get it to work. Whatever conflict my hardware was creating was insurmountable.

In frustration, I finally took all the discs to one of the computer labs at school and quietly installed the game, hoping nobody would notice.

It ran, but these machines had no real graphics acceleration so it must have been at like 5 frames per second. Still, that was enough to let me muddle my way through the race and generate a new save file on the other side of it. I quickly made a copy of the file, uninstalled the game, and hightailed it out of there.

At the time, it felt like I was committing some kind of nefarious espionage. In retrospect, I don't remember why I didn't just use one of my housemates' computers to do the exact same thing. But the mission was a success, and I was finally able to move on with the game and finish it.

Happy times.

I loved the PSP. It's hard to overstate how much it felt like the future when it released, and it had a solid library to back it up. Obviously it sold well enough to warrant a follow up.

The Vita was a nice piece of kit at a hardware level, but just kind of flopped otherwise. The "bubble" UI looked cheap and amateurish compared to the PSP's elegant cross bar, and the software support just wasn't cultivated properly. Sony really let it whither on the vine, and unfortunately learned nothing from the experience, treating both of its VR headsets largely the same way.

The Vita is one of the only pieces of gaming hardware I own that I actually regret buying. But its failure shouldn't be pretense to rewrite the PSP's legacy.

I mean, he's wrong. But on the long list of this guy's dreadful opinions, this barely registers. I love that these right-wingers will spend their days freaking out about immigrants taking their jobs — something that literally doesn't happen — but will hold the door open for software algorithms to do exactly that.

Retronauts just posted an Earthworm Jim episode the other day so I've had the franchise on my mind. Loved those first two games on my Genesis back in the day and still love to break out those carts now and then. They were wild and creative. Something generative AI can't ever be.

I got pretty good at this game as a kid, but would always fail once inside the Technodrome. Years later, in grad school, I finally committed to getting it done.

Farming scrolls in Stage 3 is montonous but very helpful. And no shame in cheesing the final stretch by moving slowly to despawn the jetpack guys as in the video above.

Shredder actually goes down pretty easy once you've been through all that.

I still like to pop this game in every so often. The first few stages are so nostalgic, and while the game is deeply flawed, there's a lot of ambition on display here. I like the more bad-ass take on the Turtles themselves. Plus the music is vintage 8-bit Konami and I love it. But I doubt I'll ever bother to finish it again.

Boy, that is one ugly controller.

Shocking. This always sounded like a very good and sensible idea that was likely to be a huge success.

At this rate, it's going to wind up materializing as a pop-up store in some midwestern strip mall sometime in 2032.

I wish I got paid as much for being incompetent as the typical CEO.

There's something fun about the era when graphics were still abstract enough that you could plausibly interpret characters in a variety of ways.

Once we got into the 6th console generation, in-game models became too definitive to really allow this kind of lattitude.

This stage is definitely an example of awful game design and deserves its notoriety on that front, but it's not as hard as people make it out to be. Just be willing to die a few times while you figure it out, and it'll be muscle memory in no time.

Once you beat it, you'll move on to stages that are far worse (in both difficulty and design).

@axelhander A computer algorithm regurgitating existing art is nowhere near the same phenomenon as an actual person being inspired by existing art. What an absolutely preposterous comparison.

I love how we use the word "adult" to mean "utterly juvenile."

Pretty funny, though.

@DiacloneFx It's just that 4:3 screens aren't really a thing anymore so it's harder and more expensive to source those kinds of parts. There isn't a functional point to it. It's a practical economic decision.

I just don't understand the point of a handheld like this at all. There are just so many options now for playing these games on dozens of more versatile hardware choices in myriad form factors. Unless you're just absolutely ride-or-die with original cartridges (which I get on some level, but on a handheld where now you have to travel with bulky games?), or have a fixation on filling that space on your shelf for the Nomad your heart always wanted, I'm not sure who the market for this is.

Hm. I loved and finished the original Ecco when I was in high school, although I never got around to any of its 16-bit sequels. Also replayed the Dreamcast game a couple years ago and found it enjoyable despite its many frustrations.

It's an uneven franchise, for sure. I'd welcome a triumphant return, but this all goes in the "cautious optimism at best" box until proven otherwise.

@Broosh Interesting. I did have the stand-alone disc and remember it running like a slideshow and hanging frequently on my 360.

Maybe it just never ran well even on OG hardware and I had unfair expectations. Or maybe a bad disc?

Regardles, I'll welcome a way to play this in higher quality!

Excellent news. It's ridiculous how difficult it is to find ways to play this game, and the 360 backwards compatibility is notoriously bad for this title.

Even as a huge Dreamcast fan and someone who usually prefers an authentic controller experience when playing classic games, the DC's controller was poorly thought out at the time and has not aged gracefully in the decades since.

Nice that this is out there for those who want it, but the DC is one console where I'm going to choose comfort over authenticity. The StrikerDC referenced in the article really is the best choice today.

At this point, my retro collection is about as complete as it can possibly get. It's crazy and young me would be gobsmacked at all the gear he'd have one day. From actual carts to Everdrives, and from OG hardware to high-quality modern clones, there is hardly a game made before 2000 that I can't play any time I want in one form or another. My media console is absolutely stacked with an embarrassment of riches.

If I have a retro gaming resolution, it's to avoid checklists and backlogs and to simply get back in touch with the fun spirit of gaming from when I was younger. Not everything needs to be finished. Not everything needs to feel like a project. It's fine to just pop a game in for a while, have a good time, and then move on. Like I used to.

I'm not sure I'll ever break completely away from modern gaming. There are still good times to be had. But the landscape nowadays can get pretty unpleasant and it's wild how easy it is to forget that this is all supposed to be fun. Retro games are just much better at reminding me, and I hope 2026 is full of them.

In 1999, we were only just starting to glimpse a future in which every single movie and television show ever made didn't need to get a tie-in video game.

@Tyaku I enjoyed the 3D effect more than most, but I don't think that this says anything about people clamoring for 3D to return.

The 3DS was a fantastic console with a killer library even if you kept that slider set to zero at all times.

Pretty cool, espeically being able to obtain save data.

Although it's worth noting that the Pocket's save states are already a good way to preserve your saves since that data is included in a save state. I've experimented with a few different GB/GBA carts, and it's definitely possible in most (maybe all?) cases to restore save data to a cart by loading a save state that includes it.

@Guru_Larry Like most genres, definitions are pretty flexible and ill-defined with a lot of cross-pollination making it even harder to pin anything down.

I think "roguelite" is generally used to describe games with iterative runs through stages, often but not always randomly/procedurally generated, but in which some new abilities or perks perist into future runs to create a broader sense of progression.

By that definition, games as disparate as Vampire Survivors, Hades, Balatro, and Ball x Pit are "roguelites".

But there are no hard and fast rules with any of this stuff. Much like movies and music and any other form of media, games can mix and match all sorts of genres.

It's funny to think of an era when this genre was rare enough that the best anybody could think was to reference the only two prominent examples of it.

Nowadays, it feels like everything is a Metroidvania. Hell, even Yar's Revenge and Pac-Man have dipped into the genre.

It's definitely a cumbersome term, but it gets the point across. And proposed alternatives like "search action" aren't really any better.

This is incredible. Looking forward to digging through all this!

I don't know, but I'd kill to have an arcade accurate version of Q*bert on Switch.

@KingMike Ha. Two-directional scrolling in those pre-MMC days was a rough ride.

@Blast16 I don't know for sure, but RetroRBG reports "for older, non-x-series carts, simply use [the] latest firmware v2.13" so you may need an update but should otherwise be good?

I've never really been able to wrap my head around the controls for this one. Something always feels backwards no matter what settings I use.

But the sequel is a gem, and easily one of the best uses of the Wii controller across its entire library.

I still enjoy a "big" mass appeal game now and then. Titles like Horizon and Spider Man come to mind. But I don't have the time or energy for more than maybe one per year. The endless quests and achievements are meant to provide value, but eventually start to feel like homework constantly tugging at the to-do list portion of my brain.

Increasingly I gravitate toward retro games and the indie titles that evoke them. Play for a bit. Have fun. Stop.

SouljaBoy version when?

Oooh — love stuff like this. Will definitely have to load this onto my Everdrive and give it a look.

That's really impressive. I love the clever use of scanlines to create the impression of a multicolored Simon sprite.

That's hysterical.

It would also be quite handy since I already have a lot of DeWalt tools...

I always enjoy Retronauts episodes that feature Gipp and his humor. This should be an enjoyable read, but I do feel like the market for this kind of thing is getting a little saturated.

Or, at the very least, I need more coffee tables.

@SlangWon That's a distinction without a difference.

It looks like **** because they used AI.

Gotta get them Yoga Flame-broiled patties.

I have an X7 and use it regularly with the Analogue Pocket. It's not absolutely necessary, I suppose. But I do appreciate that it allows access to the Pocket's built in display modes since FPGA cores don't have access to those. Depending how you want GB games to look, this does require dipping into the Pocket menu before starting a game and forcing GB mode otherwise it assumes GBC. Not a huge problem, but worth noting.

As a downside, using a flash cart means you need to sacrifice any button remapping that might be available on FPGA cores since Analogue nowadays has general contempt for its customers and refuses to implement that basic feature on the Pocket.

And not that it's anybody's top reason to buy something like this, but it also helps that Kirkzz is a good guy and actually deserves the business.

@Azuris Yeah, and later they added that little grey nub to the New 3DS XL. It's a shame there weren't that many games that made use of them, and they didn't patch the function into older games as far as I know. The most absurd example is the way the stick works in Majora's Mask but not Ocarina of Time.

But it's wild to me that someone who regularly posts about retro handhelds would express confusion about why this device might have controls that weren't native to the NDS. The NDS didn't have 4 triggers either. Options and flexibility are good!

"it's a little weird that it has dual analog sticks for NDS games"

It's a little weird that he thinks that people wouldn't also use this to play non-NDS games.

Where did you learn how to shoot?

@HoyeBoye This entire headline took me a second to process!

I think referring to arcade cabinets as "arcades" is also regional. I usually think of that term as describing the location in which the cabinets are kept and played, and not the machines themselves.

If the Saturn emulation is solid, this is a really exciting device for me and would plug a glaring hole in my hardware lineup. Here's hoping...

Love both of those channels. This should be excellent.

@The_Nintendo_Pedant That would be amazing.

The G&W Galleries on GB/GBC/GBA were nice enough at the time, but the resolution wasn't remotely high enough to sell the illusion. At the very least, I'd love to see a comprehensive collection on Switch 2 that really simulates the look of the originals.

@tjhiphop Yeah, I never thought there was any controversy or confusion about this. The Wikipedia page for the game cites a Tedium article from 2017 describing exactly what is described above.

Weird that anybody thought thought he was fake, but I guess there's no issue too small to warrant an online conspiracy theory. Why in the world would Nintendo create a fake person, include his name as an Easter egg in a major release, and then circulate a nonsense story about why?

At this point, I think everybody would prefer either:

1. A collection that includes the original games in their original forms, or

2. A new game in the series.

This split-the-baby approach of spending time and resources rebuilding old games from the ground up makes no sense, financially or culturally. It just winds up being a more expensive way to please nobody.

I can't tell how much of this is translational.

Of course it makes perfect sense that the games they played in their formative years would have reflected regional tendencies at the time. Nobody should be even slightly surprised (or upset) about that.

But it actually is hard to believe that all these years later, they wouldn't have sought out some of those missed experiences. Artists and creators tend to be interested in the work of other artists and creators. So when I read a wild sentence like "I've never had the opportunity to play with a Nintendo game console" I'm inclined to think this was translated incorrectly. They may not have had the opportunity before, but they've certainly had the opportunity by now.

I mean, I'm not even a game designer and I've happily availed myself of the opportunity to play old Master System and PC Engine games that weren't popular in the US when I was a kid.

Of course, none of this detracts from what a masterpiece Expedition 33 is, regardless of its influences.

@dodgykebaab Seems an entirely fair counterpoint to Elon good, buy his product, no?

@montrayjak I appreciate some good pedantry — no worry! You're right that I should have said DPI, although since the physical size of the screen is fixed, the denominator can't change so I'd argue that they ultimately convey the same thing.

That said, regardless of how pin-sharp the lines are, they still won't glow like the phosphors of a CRT. I'm not normally a purist for this — I'm a heathen that actually prefers retro games to have nice crisp pixels on a modern OLED. But vector lines painted by an electron gun have a particular glowy magic to them. Back in the 80s, they're kind of what we thought the future was going to look like.