RetroGames

Bringing back dem real old Satellaview levels, boyeee.

@jamess Exactly. You get it.

Really, from now on in this world, I think we should post only full and complete videos of any interviews, debates, presentations, comments, posts, etc.

I mean, have snipped sections for the sake of a simple snapshot in a short article or whatever, but then always have the full thing linked right there too for everyone to investigate properly if they so desire. I've seen far too much of "This person said this" or "This person incited this" or "This person lied about this" or "This person is a [insert very serious accusation here]", almost all based on just intentionally misrepresented clips designed to push lies and manipulate people into certain views and beliefs, and I'm sick of it--because it clearly has exactly that effect on a whole lot of people.

If everyone could simply see the full truths of all of this stuff, I think a whole lot of people would have different opinions for sure. Then we could all form actual fair and unbiased opinions based on the real facts and such too, and actually have reasonable conversations and debates about, and, God knows, maybe even find some common ground and come up with real answers and solutions.

With interviews like this one, the overall sentiment doesn't seem like it would change much even after the correction--and I agree with that original sentiment portrayed in the interview as such--but the facts need to be the facts and nothing else.

I think with all the stuff going on in the world right now, and with how easy it is for anyone with bad intentions to create entirely false narratives around whatever and whomever they want, sometimes to potentially totally destructive effect, we need to push for the simple truths and facts more than ever.

Only when people have all the facts can they form fair and honest opinions and make the right decisions and choose the correct path forward. But they do indeed need the actual unmanipulated and clear facts as ground zero there.

I'm sure our gaming journalists can manage this at least.

@HylianFox Totally hear you on that one.

And, honestly, I would just love to see a version of the original that is basically untouched other than being output in full HD, running at 60fps, and with no draw-in/pop-in. The audio could use CD quality, but otherwise be the same. And the controls could just be mapped to a modern controller, but otherwise be the same, even keeping the game on-rails and such. Maybe adding in some rumble support could be cool though.

Most people probably won't believe me, but I think that would still hold up and actually be a brilliant game to this day--even the very best Star Fox imo.

Totally worth it!

Honestly though, this doesn't look half bad at all.

@slider1983 'Tis true.

Well, I'll say no more than they're certainly playing to a very particular rabid fanbase.

I tell ya, there's like a thousand Japanese SNES games that didn't get released with English translations, so plenty for these guys to continue to work on too.

I like it. Looks very cool.

I very much am against Nintendo on this one.

@slider1983 Well, you're stating the obvious there. Lol

I don't get what the subtitle of the article has to do with anything mentioned here?

PS. I backed the Kickstarter.

I side with the developers on this one.

@RejectedAng3L You realise that Yoshi's Island, one of the greatest platform games of all time, used the FX[2] chip, right?

Also, when you said the Dreamcast and PS1 left the N64 in the dust, I presume you meant Saturn there?

Now, assuming you did mean the Saturn, there's multiple ways the N64 left the Saturn in the dust too. Saturn almost certainly could not pull off a game like Wave Rave for example. And there's a few ways the N64 beat the PS1 too. But, overall, I think the Saturn was a superior 2D system and the PS1 a better rounded 3D system overall. The N64 was certainly extremely capable though, and it gave us some of the most groundbreaking and greatest games ever made up to that point, with multiple control innovations that both those other systems copied very quickly indeed.

You sound like you're being sarcastic and facetious with that article title, but it really does need to be stated explicitly as often as possible imo, so people really do start to get the message that actual ownership of the things they buy is slowly but surely being taken away from them. If people don't take this seriously and start to properly fight back against it asap, it will at some point be too late. We deserve to own those things we pay for where it would just make common sense to most people in thinking that they already did own them upon purchase.

@Deuteros Hearing you on that.

I'd personally rather people just made actual new games for these systems, especially the SNES, rather than all this random extremely niche stuff that isn't going to impact 99.99% of the people still interested in these consoles today, but it's cool that it's something for the real hardcore types to have the option of if so desired. And, of course, I guess there are a few new Game Boy games still getting made by fans, so those are all presumably playable on the SNES this way too, which is a nice little bonus for SNES fans. Ultimately, despite my personal wants, which is just many more new indie/homebrew SNES titles, it's a great thing that people are still working on anything to do with these old systems, so this is all good really.

Can't really disagree with the artist personally to be honest. I just think this lacks all the visual charm of the original 2D games. And not because it's 3D, but because it's totally charmless 3D.

I might be interested in getting a Tamagotchi for a bit of fun if it had a little colour screen, even just as simple as say the Game Boy Color.

Some interesting stuff developing there.

And these guys have also said they're going to support the new "FX3" chip that's being used on the upcoming SNES Doom Definitive Edition as well, so that's very interesting and exciting too.

I wonder if they'll support the new SNES controller that has rumble support that was made in conjunction with Doom Definitive Edition on this Star Fox stuff also--anyone heard anything on that?

This honestly just sounds terrible to me. I hate all this sponsorship crap shoving random totally out of place celebrities and corporate mascots and other "in" things of the moment into games. It's why I just cannot bring myself to actually play Fortnite. I mean, I tried it and it actually plays pretty well, but I just cannot actually play it beyond that. The inclusion of Ronaldo in this fighting game has just lowered any respect I might have had for it at a serious property.

Personal taste, but I'd say ActRaiser's soundtrack is his best work. And the main theme to Streets of Rage 1/2 is up there as well. Those two are him peak imo. This sounds good too though. At moments I think it's got a bit of that ActRaiser vibe to it actually, but if it were done through a '90s synthesiser rather than with real instruments. Well, at least the tracks as they sound in the linked YouTube OST video anyway.

OK, but these game are really beyond NES visuals and capabilities in quite a few ways. It's similar to Shovel Knight, which in some ways looked like NES, mostly in terms of colours, but really was far beyond what NES was capable of. They're more like a suped-up NES, maybe some kind of imaginary 12-bit system or something. They all look really cool though. Would kinda love to see these guys make something for SNES like this and actually release it as a real physical cartridge for the system.

I'm sure a handful of people will give this a try.

@PopetheRev28 Very true. Not quite as great as those games in a few key ways imo, but a solid title in its own right. There's a few ways I do wish it was a bit more polished and took better advantage of the SNES though. But it is what it is. It was about as close to getting Shinobi for SNES as it got. A very good game that's more than worthy of giving a go for any retro SNES gamers out there.

If you add SNES support, you'll get my support.

@KingMike Yeah, tell me about it. I've faced these issues multiple times with the various games I've both successfully made and the ones I've never finished in my time. The never static nature of modern development environments and all the software development kits and so on is a real personal nightmare for me to be honest.

@Sketcz Yeah, I got the sense he thinks there's pretty much nothing of worth to actually show there. He might be right if it's all too programmery and obscure for the target readers here to appreciate it it. But I'd say if there was anything moving around on the screen at all, which seems to be the case, and it wasn't all just using terrible coder placeholder art or something that just does more harm than good in terms of conveying what's going on and would just make everyone jump to strange conclusions, it would probably still be cool to see.

Is there a way this guy can compile his tech demo at least and share it with you guys or whomever just so we can see even that early test?

Even just some pictures or a bit of footage of it running would be something.

I love seeing stuff like this for SNES. And sometimes it even shows off some cool graphical tricks and approaches that I think can benefit the modern indie/homebrew dev scene. like, the bit where he mentions splitting the screen and using Mode 7 and animating the full background by updating lots of tiles, etc, all sounds very interesting to me.

Definitely worth pushing a little harder to see if you can get something there imo.

@Daniel36 Yes, but not for SNES.

I was working on an fps game called Disasteroid by a company named Second Skin Media back in the day that never saw the light of day. Both the game and company have kinda disappeared off the face of the Earth now. It was during the PS2/Xbox/GC era, and it was pretty cool because it had this unique mechanic where you could dynamically react to sound cues in the environment and it would automatically turn your view towards the sound, which sometimes resulted in some jump scare of some creature whizzing past in the shadows for example. It was a bit of a horror game. And I like to joke that it was a game about a "Disaster on an Asteroid" when describing it, like the name wasn't totally on the nose. Lol But it was; it was a game about prisoners stuck in a prison that was located on an asteroid, and then some kind of alien creature had invaded it and you were one of the guards trying to make your way through it and survive the ordeal, with both the alien creature and the violent prisoners coming after you. Genuinely, it had a very Alien Isolation vibe to it.

Interestingly, I actually also created a design document for a GBA version of the game too. Kinda thinking of how a SNES version of that might have played out now. . . .

Shame they never actually made this a thing, as I would have liked to have seen and played such a SNES game.

In fact, I'd be happy to see all unfinished and unreleased SNES games finished and released. I especially wish RARE would just fully complete and release the apparently 99% complete SNES version of Killer Instinct 2 already for example. I mean, seriously, how hard would that be. And, with the excitement and enthusiasm around the recently announced official SNES Doom Definitive Edition that comes with a brand new "FX3" chip inside and also support for a similarly brand new SNES controller with built-in rumble support, I imagine a release of Killer Instinct 2 for SNES today would be a big deal. It could even add support for that SNES rumble controller now too.

There's surely a whole lot of cool stuff there that SNES fans could be appreciating and enjoying.

Any "game researcher" saying that isn't really worth listening to imo, as they clearly haven't done any real research on the history and development of this game at all. Never mind also considering the original Street Fighter that factors into this too.

It's real simple: Japan and America were by far the largest gaming markets in the world at the time of the original Street Fighters' creation, and the developers patently just wanted to put in a couple of characters that appealed to their two biggest demographics. Nintendo literally used to list console sales as Japan, America (I think North America), and "other", which should tell you all you need to know there. So, they originally put a Japanese guy as the lead, which make total sense given the developers were probably all Japanese, and they put an American as the second/alternative player choice basically. That's it. Ain't no rocket science.

And with Street Fighter II it was simply a case of the Japanese game creators wanting a varied range of characters from around the world that fit literally into the title of "World Warrior", as the game is about fighters trying to prove themselves as the best out there, so they put in a Japanese dude, an American dude, an Indian dude, a Brazillion thing from the forest , etc, and represented a few popular martial arts and fighting styles of the era as well, like sumo, karate, kickboxing, ninjutsu, boxing, etc. This is why later games expanded the roster to include a Jamaican dude, a British female, a Chinese Bruce Lee ripoff, a Mexican Native American dude, etc.

It's not about "Japan vs America" in any sense other than it's literally a Japanese dude fighting and American dude if you pick the characters from those two countries imo.

Also, Damien, come one, get off the high horse with crap like " it was made in the '90s, and having an Indian yogi with shrunken skulls around his neck was almost acceptable back then."

No one was even remotely calling out stuff like this back in the day as some kind of "problem", as every normal sane person knew fine well there was no harm or foul intended and indeed that such designs simply make these characters more interesting and cartoonish rather than realistic and boring. And trying to rewrite history on such things to make them seem, I dunno, racist or whatever, is just a very bad look for any supposed "professional" journalist here imo.

Christ, can you imagine how utterly boring a realistic portrayal of some yoga master would be in a fighting game if the creators couldn't use a bit of imagination and stretch the truth a little for the sake of creating fun fighters. . . .

No one was ever remotely harmed by someone drawing some pretend Indian martial arts video game character with some shrunken skulls around their neck. Dude clearly got those from kicking ass and boiling his opponents . . . no, wait, that would probably be a Mortal Kombat fatality or something. The character designer probably just used Temple of Doom as some reference there or whatever. It's just a fun movie-style/cartoon-style caricature and characterisation and such.

The character designs were never a problem in the first place, and they're not one now. And anyone trying to make it some retroactive problem really needs to grow up and find some real problems in the world to virtue signal about and go rally over imo. Ideally on a site that's not about video games.

I expect this one will have lovely art examples.

It all looks too zoomed out most of the time imo.

Annoyingly, pretty much all of those colours are just a little off for me in terms of the hues and shades they went with. It's frustrating as hell when I see console creators do that. Because even with all those options, none are ones I would actually want. This kind of stuff is not rocket science. It's not that hard to get it right with a set of more universally appealing core colours.

I thought it meant actual semi-transparency when I read the subtitle of the article. And that would have been really cool to see. But those walls just looks dithered.

I mean, to be fair, I'm not sure what other name you could have used to describe them. But maybe adding the word "dithered" in there might have helped to just make things clear up front.

This is probably why it wasn't widely advertised when the Saturn version originally came out, because the PlayStation version had actual semi-transparent walls normally in some levels as I recall, and I guess it would not have looked great if the cheat for the Saturn version gave you something that wasn't up to technical par there.

The lack of proper semi-transparency in Sega consoles and add-ons from the Genesis to Saturn and everything in between has always annoyed me. And, yes, I know the Saturn could actually do proper semi-transparency, but not that many games actually used it and instead went with the dithering that just looks noticeably worse, and that's my point.

So, basically, this revelation didn't leave me with a smile on my face.

@Max_the_German I see what you did there. Lol

In this case, I don't really think changing some of those names makes any meaningful difference to the experience, not to me at least, but I have no problems with both versions now existing for people to choose the one that makes most sense to them. So it's a win win really. It's really not the most interesting or exciting of the literally thousands of SNES patches that have been created and are still being created for you to pick as the one to make an article on mind you.

They spent a lot of time on it, so hopefully it delivers.

There's just way too many different handheld systems coming out these days imo, especially retro-focused ones.

Well, not from Atari.

Seems like as good a way to learn as any.

Oof! That must have smarted.

@RupeeClock Yeah, that Logan guy comes across as a bit of a plonker to me. But I honestly don't care about him, just the end product. Hopefully it's as good as it all appears to be. So far, I'm pretty confident Palmer is going to deliver where it counts.

@RupeeClock Ah, okay. So it's just a bunch of celebs or whomever that have had their hands on it thus far.

@RupeeClock Haven't they already done that?

Happy to see they'll be doing a GBA system at some point. I loved my GBA SP with a passion.

But I'm rooting most highly for a SNES system from these guys next above all. And doubly so because it means they'll likely want to launch it with some proper brand new SNES titles as well, which I think would be great and might just spur on the SNES homebrew scene a bit more too.

Of all the beloved retro [home] consoles, I actually think the SNES is getting the least love at this time compared to its relative popularity at the time it was around originally, and I'd like to see that imbalance addressed in modern times. If Palmer gets involved, I expect he could do something really great there. But I think he's possibly actually a bigger Genesis fan, which doesn't bode well for what I'm after with SNES. If I'm wrong and he actually prefers the SNES though, well that could be potentially great if he decides to do something on that front.

And I don't say that because I don't like the Genesis or wish great support for it too, but because of that huge imbalance with all these retro consoles in modern times as I see it, specifically the lack of relative support for the SNES compared to most of the other historically less popular systems that are actually seeing pretty great homebrew support right now.

The SNES homebrew scene is just starting to see some signs of life, and the recent reveal of the official physical release of SNES Doom Definitive Edition with a new "FX3" chip alongside a new rumble controller, as well as the announcement that "SNESmaker" support is getting added to NESmaker, might help there in a potentially big way in the future, but SNES still deserves a lot more homebrew love than it's currently getting imo.

There ain't enough clear images of the content to give me an idea if I'm actually interested in this or not. The art is a side thing. I want to see what a few more pages of actual content look like properly and clearly.

That's a pretty interesting idea there. And, since almost everyone has a case on their phone anyway, it's one of the few solutions that actually makes a lot of sense. Now it's just a matter of doing it right.

@KingMike Similarly, I would love to see a whole bunch of Genesis games ported to SNES, the big hitters:

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 (don't care about the rest)
Streets of Rage 1 and 2 (don't care about 3)
Golden Axe 1 (not really bothered about the rest)
Alien Storm
Thunder Force IV
Virtua Racing (just to see how close the FX2 or now "FX3" could get)
Alien Soldier
Ghouls 'n Ghosts
Aladdin
The Adventures of Batman & Robin
Splatterhouse 2
Contra: Hard Corps
Gunstar Heroes
M.U.S.H.A
Mercs
Super Fantasy Zone
Castle of Illusion
Revenge of Shinobi and Shinobi III
Comix Zone
Dynamite Headdy
Castlevania: Bloodlines

And I would ideally like them to take further advantage of the SNES' features with these ports and add in more colours, proper transparency, more background layers, maybe use some nice Mode 7 rotation and scaling in some choice places, ideally add surround sound support, and take extra advantage of the SNES' controller in some cases.

Anytime anyone wants to gets started on that list, that would be great.