RextheSheep

I didn't play this one, but I loved Commander Keen and the original Duke Nukem growing up, so I have a lot of nostalgia for Apogee-style games in general.

I love this! It's great to see new ports of classic games in the Atari+ catalogue.

Man, I don't know what I'll do, but I can tell you I was excited for this game before and this has just made everything feel incredibly weird.

Huh! I learned something today!

Bless Damien and the photos he takes for these articles.

@GhaleonUnlimited I guess it wouldn't be any different as long as it's all clean room and you're not distributing their copyrighted code/ROMs. It's pretty common in the arcade world for there to be custom hardware designed for just one game, so it kind of just comes with the territory.

Honestly, I dig it!

Huh, well I'll be damned! I was expecting just the classic MiSTer menu, but this looks quite special!

@PinballBuzzbro I don't blame you for feeling the way you do. However, it paints a picture of exactly what I was afraid of to have all these controversies hitting at once. It really puts a damper on the entire hobby, and the worst part is I don't know how to reassure you that it's not all like this, especially when you and many others have already been burned. A lot of people's trust has been broken by companies that were once doing an excellent job, but have really dropped the ball – myself and my partner included.

@slider1983 They'd have to update a lot more; they haven't traded under the "Koch Media" name in a long time, instead going by Plaion these days.

God this game looks so cool.

Dang, they just keep delivering more than I ever could have asked!

(I guess it's not that unexpected given that the two games' reverse engineering projects share a common codebase, but still. Wild!)

A game so nice it fits on a single side of a Famicom disk.

@spysmily Oh, also, save states and suspending your game are possible on FPGA, and even on original hardware with certain Everdrive models, but it generally works better on software emulation. – That's actually one of the main reasons I still sometimes use software emulation over original hardware, even if I prefer hardware.

@spysmily Rather than thinking about it in negative terms, consider this: software emulation is still really good for enhancements – i.e. resolution, frame rate, or adding new features on the emulator level, particularly for newer 3D consoles. You can definitely do enhancements in FPGA too, but software is still king there in my opinion.

It's also still not really viable in the consumer space to do FPGA implementations of something like Nintendo GameCube or Xbox 360/PS3 yet. That's another reason why software emulation is still relevant.

(I also considered netplay, particularly for arcade games, which hasn't been done on FPGA systems yet to my knowledge. I'm not sure if that's even possible or not; it feels like a huge challenge, but I don't feel certain enough to say it isn't possible.)

Of course, when it comes to Japanese game history there's also a language and cultural barrier to contend with. Things have been "uncovered" by westerners that could have been common knowledge in Japan this entire time. But that's not always the case – plenty of media is at risk of being lost to time as well.

@HammerGalladeBro No, you're absolutely right. There is a real issue where much of gaming history is only told from an English-speaking and often USA-specific perspective.

I'm from Australia and it's even similar for us – we also had our own computer/gaming history and our own magazines that are difficult to find today. So I totally sympathize.

Yeah I'm very much in agreement here. Software-based emulation and FPGA (which you could consider "hardware emulation") are simply good at different things in my view.

There's nothing to be gained for us by pitting the two technologies against each other. – There is, however, a marketing incentive for Analogue to brand their products as "zero emulation". Which is, yeah, misleading, and by design.

Yeah that's definitely based on the existing arcade version.

I have often wondered how that supposed 32X version would have looked though. It always seemed like a huge ask.

It's cute! Gonna keep an eye on this one.

Perhaps I'm biased since I can personally vouch for some of the people behind this project, but this is definitely one to watch.

@Serpenterror Well, good news. There does actually happen to be an unrelated port of classic Shinobi to the Sega Genesis in development too.

As someone whose been a part of the SRB2 community for nearly two decades, this is HUGE. I'm glad that this game and it's developers can still surprise me all these years later.

I adore these releases, but I super regret not importing the triple pack for the collection when it was brand new. All I have is the one volume we did get, and some of the individual titles digitally.

I don't know if I should be disappointed or grateful. I think I'm simultaneously both.

"If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, send one dollar to Sorry Dude, 742 Evergreen Terrace, Springfield."

I'm usually really sensitive to input latency and there's some absolutely shocking examples of it on Switch, even in new games, but I honestly never felt like the NES and SNES NSO apps were all that bad. – and I do play on a real SNES on a CRT too, so I have experience with both and can tell the difference. Particularly in something like Mega Man vs the legacy collections.

That said I do trust Voultar's judgement on things like that. Perhaps my own tolerance is a bit more lenient.

The Polymega perhaps still isn't for me, but this honestly pretty cool!

Awesome! I've been loving these ports already, but I love seeing new features like this! I do indeed remember these backgrounds from the 3D Classics version.

Far from me to downplay the importance of these unique games being preserved, but I've also always been endlessly fascinated by the keitai version of Rockman X. 👀