Sketcz

I've been there - it's a wonderful museum. This is very sad.

@GravyThief
It's not only extreme video imagery (ie: violence, nipples,vetc.) . It's also thematic or verbal content. For example, as cited in the one history video linked above (world history, not games), simply saying "September 11th" in any context gets you automatically demonetised.

Any topic deemed too triggering gets AI flagged. The creator of that video says he's been able to get this reversed sometimes.

YT's algorithm searches audio and imagery. And anything remotely traumatising gets flagged. It prevents adult discussion about real issues.

I look at how fluid and light and breezy this looks, and then I think of Sonic 4 where it felt like you were controlling a lead weight.

How and why do Sega always get it wrong and it falls to fans to recapture the energy of the originals? Years later and I'm still perplexed anyone thought the physics in 4 was the right direction.

@Ryu_Niiyama
Don't feel obligated. It's the holiday season anyway, when most people are off work and distracted by leisurely pursuits. If you feel like responding there's no rush - enjoy the new year and we can reconvene in 2025.

@Razieluigi @bluemage1989
More importantly, this was a commercialised for profit endevour. They made money from this documentary they created - using artwork created by others.

Granted, only a small portion of screen time, but they still used someone else's labour (Kate making art) to contribute to their profit making.

This is why licensing deals can be so convoluted.

And there are laws which allow small free use of another's material, notably for educational or satirical purposes. Kate in turn has shown material created by others when, for example, describing the origins of Metroid.

But then you need to properly attribute where this work came from.

Also, let's make a distinction between:

(a) Kate showing Buichi Terasawa's manga art which inspired Metroid, in a video about Metroid's origins...

And...

(b) custom made art (fan art you could argue) being taken and used to describe a theoretical alternate history timeline where Bluto was Donkey Kong.

They were not using discarded Nintendo art.

They went online and just grabbed whatever they found.

It'd be like me or another writer just randomly grabbing fan made art off Instagram, or DeviantArt, and using that, instead of officially related assets.

You can - but you need to get permission.

Again, it's not like Nintendo provided them with discarded art. They took this from someone else's history project.

@KitsuneNight
I agree. Both systems have some all time exclusive masterpieces on them, available nowhere else (several actually owned by Sega).

It pains me there is no easy, low cost, legal way for the mainstream to access them.

But ultimately if this is Sega's intention then I'll continue to recommend Sega's great games, and the curious can find their own way, any way they can.

Looks at two Saturns with ODE, a DC with ODE, and three CRT.

Eh. I'm good.

I wonder if they ripped off anything bespoke from Time Extension (created by TE or one of its contributors specifically for the site) without permission.

Come to think of it, did they rip off anything from me? (I don't have Discovery - someone ping me if they did.)

I feel sorry for Kate - she creates fantastic, well researched, fascinating videos, but they don't seem to reach the critical viral mass they deserve (no pun intended). I've been influenced by and created work based on her research myself, notably my history of Pac-man article, but I always credit her and have emailed privately on various topics.

This is just ***** behaviour from the docu producers.

(3) "These indies just want a shortcut because they don’t want to eat the costs if they fail."

• I very strongly oppose this statement. Again, these are 18 year old students cited in the article, not indie devs. They don't want a shortcut. After this article was published others, in private, said similar things. If an idea they had showed even slight similarities to something by Nintendo, they were concerned. Now when I say this, I don't mean a platformer like Mario. I'm talking about some of their fringe ideas. Tomodatchi Life has already been cited, and there are games preceding it. Nintendo has tried and abandoned various fringe concepts - which could be reworked into something unique and fresh.

But again, the whole point of this article was to highlight that 18 year old students, viewing the news, and the world around them, are now immediately associating Nintendo with litigation.

It doesn't matter what counter points anyone makes. It does not invalidate or erase the personal experiences or cognitive belief systems these students are developing.

If their fears are completely 100% unfounded, then the point remains: Nintendo has a PR / image problem.

(4) "Stop stealing from others and you won’t get sued."

• dismissive and clearly hasn't read the article. They don't want to steal from anyone, but they are self-censoring pre-emptively even if prior art exists from before Nintendo's work.

(5) "Games and patents are publicly accessible and it isn’t hard to do a little research to make sure you aren’t infringing"

• not true, the patents Konami has for invisible walls are in Japanese only and an absolute nightmare to dig up the originals. I saved them and now distribute them when asked, because I can't even find them anymore. Very difficult if the patents are in a foreign language.

(6) "Make your own games and make them unique."

• the students want to make original unique games. But likewise they shouldn't be expected to reinvent the wheel. Reading the idea of observing NPCs living their lives and trying to influence them sounds pretty good actually. Indirect interaction, a sort of artificial-life (a-life) system which calls to mind various titles from The Great Escape to Nights and Roommania 203, but with a human touch.

But you know what? If someone wants to make derivative games that's cool too. Some of my favourite films and games have followed a template, they just happened to do them really well.

TL;DR
Stop disregarding the experiences of others. These students are hard working and have the best intentions.

@Ryu_Niiyama
I'm going to have to make multiple posts.

I did read what you said, and I disagree with several specific points. Though my response was flippant and quite broad. I'll attempt to articulate precisely.

Thank you for the link. That patent page does not look like it. The Forbes page doesn't have a paywall (at least not for me):
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2024/09/20/palworld-should-be-very-afraid-of-nintendos-death-star-like-lawsuit/

The interview cited however, does have a paywall, which I bypassed via the Internet Archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240919162101/https://www.404media.co/cold-blooded-business-nintendo-is-patent-trolling-palworld-because-it-got-too-big/

The quote regarding the shadow patent is described thus (edited by me for space):

Serkan Toto: This lawsuit is filed under Japanese law, so it has nothing to do with the US, nothing to do with the UK or EU law at all. I think they never lost a lawsuit that they initiated themselves, and under the Japanese legal system, seven years ago, they sued a company called Colopl, which is a mobile gaming powerhouse from Japan. They [Colopl] have, I think, almost 2,000 [employees], nobody but knows them outside Japan but they had a famous mobile game called White Cat Project, not copying Mario, not copying Pokémon, not copying Zelda, nothing at all. Nintendo brought forward six patents that they thought that this company was violating. One of the patents was for a confirmation screen after sleep mode. Nintendo has a patent on that, and this game uses it. And then Nintendo said you're using our patent and you cannot do that. You're not paying us any licensing fees. And they had five other ones, including one for isometric, pseudo, 3D games, when the character is hidden behind the tree, the game forms a shadow, so you have a kind of sense for where the character is, even though you don't see the character clearly. Nintendo has a patent on that, and this game uses that technology. And Nintendo said, look, you cannot do this. And this goes on with four other patents, right?

To be honest, even the sleep screen patent seems ridiculous.

Now putting aside this patent discussion, let me prove that I did in fact read your comment.

(1) "If people are making games banking on an association with a well known product, that isn’t creative and yes imo they deserve to be sued"

• the students in this article are not banking on anything, they're expressing a fear based on what's in the news, and are disinclined to explore interesting ideas just in case some part partially resembles something by Nintendo. This has the opposite effect to what you want. The student's idea is mentioned above - a world where players observe NPCs and offer advice. They felt it might resemble Tomodatchi Life. I'd argue it resembles the even earlier Roommania 203. Regardless the desire to explore creativity is a pure one, not based on "banked association"

(2) "People make Disney porn too"

• this point feels like it's straying. The fact porn is made of Disney material and isn't sued is due to America's allowing of parodies. A long time ago I read up on the Mario porn movie, and Nintendo just bought the rights entirely because the first amendment makes suing difficult. It's a whole other complicated topic.

Glad this is getting some attention.

I was aware of this from interview snippets when MGS came out in the big box special edition, but didn't have a reliable source to link to.

The most interesting thing here is that Metal Gear isn't really Kojima's game. He saved the project, changed its direction, made it his own, but initially the project started as something else, with someone else in charge.

I wish we knew who those other veteran devs are, who he alludes to, and a bit more about the game as it existed before he came on board.

But it's kinda ironic - Kojima's most iconic creation was started by someone else.

@Vatrak
Sources please. I used Forbes as my primary source (being a reliable media outlet). If what you say is true, then I wish to read further since it inverts my original belief. Wasn't trolling - until I can read some sources on "Nintendo protecting the little guys" my view is based on and reflected in that Forbes article. I feel I've done sufficient research if a large, respected websites is citing interview quotes to make a point. Genuinely curious to see your alternative sources showing Nintendo to have small devs in mind.

@Ryu_Niiyama
Just so I understand this correctly, you support Nintendo taking out a patent on "showing the shadow of someone hiding behind a tree" and then suing an indie developer for $20 million, because their game had trees and shadows? This specific example is linked above in the article via Forbes.

I just want to be sure I'm understanding you correctly, and that your "stop stealing from Nintendo" request is directed at that indie developer. With the trees. And shadows behind trees.

Just so we're all on the same page.

@Futureshark
Could be M&S. Would explain why I couldn't find it in the Argos catalogues. My memory of 20 years ago is faded.

It stuck with me because I'm perplexed they thought it was a good idea. Like, were there other photos which were worse?

Thanks for the link - LOL!

@Futureshark
Not related to this article - but I wanted to ask about your avatar. Is that from an old Argos / Janet Frasier / Kays catalogue? In the 90s I saw that same photo for a Dalek costume and thought the kid looked so miserable - was that honestly the best photo from the day's shoot?

And for years I'd tell people about it, and no one believed me. "Why would a catalogue use a photo of an unhappy child to sell a product?"

But searching old catalogues I couldn't find it. Started to wonder if it were real.

And today I stumble across it in your avatar. Wondering if you found it online, or actually took it from a product catalogue?

@Polley001
No worries - we're cool.

The talk was streamed and there's an embed this Saturday, so if you feel like watching a 70 minute history lecture you can judge its content directly.

@Polley001
I gave the talk, and I see what you mean. Though allow me to clarify.

The talk was about the lineage of ideas in games. Developers stating explicitly taking inspiration from other games. Shigeru Miyamoto for example stating he was inspired by The Black Onyx for the original Zelda.

Part of the talk touched upon legal court cases where "prior art" was used as a defence. Camera change and Star Wars, as linked above.

After the talk I suddenly received questions on legal precedents, which surprised me. Tomodatchi Life came up, I suggested The Sims and Little Computer People.

I actually did not mention Nintendo suing anyone at any point during the talk - other than Nintendo trying to stop Sega's canera patent.

The above quote from me, linking to three Nintendo news stories, was researched after the lecture, when I was doing a write up. I wanted readers to see the same news stories the students might stumble upon.

Damien suggested we spin off that section from the main feature and I agreed. So he wrote this article incorporating it. The main feature is due this Saturday.

Those three examples were not shown to students.

To be clear:
The specific legal examples shown to students were not Nintendo suing, but rather were mainly examples where someone won and was allowed to do something (ie: Data East and Fighter's History; Sony and Nintendo overturning Sega).

The idea was that knowledge of the past can protect you by citing precedents.

I was initially surprised when this concern over Nintendo came up.

EDIT:
No apologies needed

@Polley001
No ghost stories were told.

The 18 year olds read the same news as you, and their concerns have manifested organically.

To be honest I'd not even thought about it and was quite surprised. But if a young person describes an original game idea, but they abandon it because some parts seem a little similar to a Nintendo game, I would describe that as "stifling creativity". Absolutely.

You need to look at it from this angle: these are young minds, still forming, and the legal climate of litigation is affecting these minds.

If Nintendo is willing to sue over sheet music, then that creates a climate of fear and paranoia.

I personally regard the Palworld case as a load of ridiculous nonsense. It's legal trolling.

I find the fact we have PS3 emulation fascinating.

I can recall with absolute clarity reading the Zophar's Domain forums in the late 1990s, and someone (an emulator programmer I believe) adamantly saying we would never, ever, in no way possibly ever see Mega CD emulation. Because you'd need to code a Mega Drive emulator, and a Sega CD emulator, and then have these two emulators communicate with each other somehow, and it was just technologically impossible. (Looking at their forums now, the earliest threads are 2004; I may have read this in 2000, but I feel like it was pre-millennium.)

Today we have PS3 emulators.

Never underestimate human potential for doing things with technology.

@KingMike @KitsuneNight
I interviewed the guy who made this - Macaw45 was my consultant for the Sein/Xain/Zain interview with Kensuke Takahashi. (I think I even posted him the guy's autograph...)

The company boss (guy called Miyamoto - seriously, it's a common surname) was a real sociopath who would use physical violence against staff. His rep was infamous, so the rumour among Japanese players was he was yakuza. So I asked Takahashi and turns out the boss was just a sociopath and terrible at business. No criminal ties.

He also revealed a lot about many of their games. Some fun points about Dios:
He made it in two and a half months. The rule was only two months for a game, but as his pet project he had to plead for an extra 2 weeks.

The X68k version runs too fast because it's incomplete. He described it as being a prototype still, done in 3 weeks, but they shipped it anyway. He said none of the other versions were finished properly, only the lead PC-88 version.

He was involved with every aspect of it, since it was to be his last game. He was also lead programmer and wrote half of all the dialogue. But he also had help from another unamed designer.

At the end he gifted me his only copy. I still have it. We then loaded it back at the GPS. And Joseph archived the floppies.

Now, to be fair, the PC-88 monitor and graphics work in a strange way. The vertical resolution is doubled through use of black scanlines. And on a CRT the colour lines blend into them. It looks better than the above video. (Although he has an actual PC-88, whatever means he used to capture footage, we're all probably watching it on our phones or desktop LCDs.)

Emulators either double the colour lines, or can add the black lines, but on an LCD monitor you don't have CRT blending. I'm not saying it's amazing. But in real life it's better than what you see on Youtube. Like those memes of PS1 graphics on CRT or LCD.

I finished the Zack level back in the day. It's flawed, as computer games back then were, but I had fun. It was an attempt, in 10 weeks, to produce a large interconnected epic adventure with multiple varied characters. I've long thought it would benefit from ripping the X68 graphics and remaking it on the Mega Drive, properly. As stated, it does feel a lot like Falcom's RPG platformers.

@Shiryu
I can confirm the ROM runs on emulators and flashcart. When asked about a digital release, I was told they're looking into it. So watch this space.

I hated Funko before. Now even more so.

I love CDRomance. Every single CD based fan-translation patch has failed to work for me when I try to patch manually, and I have zero interest in figuring out why.

CDRomance offers these pre-patched, flawlessly running from the start on all my ODEs.

Now it's basically semi-shut down?

I will miss it.

I actually owned this. Found it in a UK thrift store in the late 90s (in Cambridge I think?). Zero clue how it wound up in a bin of junk in the UK. No other games alongside. I think they mistook it as a music CD? Ripped the iso, patched it, reburned to CDR, played 5 mins and abandoned it. I had no idea the band was real.

This article unearthed a long forgotten memory. Thank you.

@Zeebor15
Pretty much anyone can get access to Games Press. Try the GPS site - there's a form and address.

They're pretty good with helping people. They exist to provide this data.

@drypaphmrbro
The official reason is because the Steam client runs on... Some lame browser, Chrome or something? And that no longer supports older OS, so they can't be bothered to use bespoke software or make a workaround.

Microsoft doesn't support Linux, yet Steam does. It's not a MS issue.

I remember first reading the title "Three Dirty Dwarves" for an unseen game and had to investigate. Turned out to be an all time favourite.

So I totally would have looked up Rupert the Battlesheep.

@Zeebor15
Is it insane though? Databases of information such as that are the foundation upon which society is built. I don't see why such a new medium as games should not have a reliable listing for all retail releases.

Here's the web URL with info:
https://www.gamepres.org/en/dbsearch/

There's a contact form too. Do you have access to Games Press? That's a different entity for journos, housing press releases. The Japanese GPS has an entry with further contact deets there.

The GPS is small and non-profit, so replies might be slow. But they're attempting a similar goal to yourself - albeit only JP releases.

@Zeebor15
Have you chatted with Joseph Redon of the Japanese Game Preservation Society? They're an NPO and I believe their database of JP games is public access. They don't cover doujin, and there's a cut off point (I forget when), but it may make it easier keeping track of that side.

@HammerGalladeBro

Kolibri is great (2D shooter with hummingbird)

Metal Head is good (mecha combat)

Tempo - I don't like it personally, but some people rave about this 2D platformer

Chaotix is good in theory, but the physics actually suck. I have never mentally grasped how to play it. Both characters constantly cancel each other out. Also you can sometimes get screwed by being partnered with a statue which weighs you down.

I looked into this years back. Fascinating part of the lineage of Action RPGs. The important thing to consider here is that is achieved full colour scrolling on a PC-88. Which was a pretty big deal, since the hardware wasn't really meant to achieve it. Part of the reason Ys 1~3 was popular on PC-88 was they achieved scrolling.

Waiting for Gandhara to drop next. Another Action RPG on PC-88 with scrolling.

Since the Steam client no longer supports Windows 7, meaning I cannot download or play any of my Steam library, GOG is my new go to. Their installers still run. Also **** Steam. They support Linux, which had a SMALLER active userbase than Win7, but they threw the rest of us to the wind.

I have had the fan-translation on my PSIO for ages now.

Been playing a lot of RPGs recently though, so taking a break.

For those who have played it - should it be bumped higher on the "to play" list?

Never understood the love for Ridge Racer (or Sega Rally). I hated it - made me think the new generation was a waste of time.

I had loved Mario Kart with its 20 tracks. Ridge had three tracks. THREE! You'd see all the content in about 20 minutes. Friends were raving about it but to me there was literally no game there. It was nothingness. THREE TRACKS!! It was like a demo more than a game.

I came to love the PS1, but only much later. The launch games, for me, were vacuous nothings.

The first game I loved for it was Resident Evil. Now that was jam packed with content.

@sdelfin Good luck - you're aware of it so can take appropriate actions if feeling unwell.

I was honestly really shocked to discover this aspect of OLED.

I kept thinking it had to be something else, but a repeat attempt confirmed it.

I avoid them now.

Will it work on Windows 7?

The Mystical Ninja 64 port only worked on Win10 and above.

@sdelfin
I might, eventually, switch. I've been considering it for years - once the faffing pushes me over a certain limit I'll do so.

However, let us now discuss photosensitivity, fellow sufferer!

How do you feel using OLED screens? I discovered recently, when using a Switch, that I have a severe sensitivity to OLED. It was my first OLED of any kind, and after 2 or 3 hours I felt dizzy, nauseaus, and had a severe migraine. The migraine lasted all the next day - one of the worst of my life. Looking it up, turns out the method for regulating brightness (pulse width modulation) affects some people.

Tested it again, same result. Swapped for an LCD and felt fine. Trawled the net to find lots of people with the same problem when using the OLED Switch or OLED TVs.

Which was a surprise, because I'd always thought photosensitivity related to epilepsy only.

Does OLED affect you?

@N64-ROX
@sdelfin
Thank you both for sharing your experiences. I feel like we should start a forum topic on OS choices.

All of these posts has put the fear into me.

Somehow my old Win7 dedktop upgraded to Win10, for free, and kept the old Win7 interface. It snaps to grid, but it's better than Win8 or whatever else came after. My brother had a Win8 laptop and I thought I was having a stroke - I couldn't "see" how to interact with it properly. Just awful.

Another reason I prefer legacy OS is using an old 2002 version of MS Word. It allowed white text on a dark blue background, which is easy on the eyes if you're a writer spending 10 hours staring at the screen.

Later updates removed this. Forcing black text on bright white. This is like writing text on a lightbulb and trying to it read it when turned on.

I felt like a mugger had punched me in the gut. They had stolen my ability to use the software.

Why?! Why does MS remove good functionality?!

Anyway both your posts, while informative, make me want to continue using legacy rigs, but then have a cheap laptop for online use. I'll do work on the legacy rigs, then hop on the Win11 laptop just to use Firefox and connect online for banking etc.

I'm too old and tired for faffing about endlessly with new OS.

My time on the leading edge of technology has ended.

@sdelfin
Yeah, I don't use forums anymore. Too much meanness these days. Everyone always angry.

The PCE with TerraOnion is incredible. I run it via RGB on a CRT. The only downside is you don't have QOL stuff like save states or cheats.

Re Linux: what prompted the switch? Given how awful Windows has become, when they stop support for Win10, I was thinking maybe I should switch too.

Biggest complaint: Microsoft disabled the ability to turn off suto-arrange in folders. I had to hack my registry to get it on Win7.

I'm very visually oriented, so I need files inside folders to ve clustered in groups at different places. Bottom left is WIP. Bottom right backburner folders. Etc. I walk my mouse and my eyes between the gaps like a man wabsering a warehouse.

When Win10 didn't allow registry hacking, and every folder is a filled grid pattern wiyh no gaps, my brain switches off and I literally struggle to see anything.

Does Linux allow old school folder visualisation?

This probably sounds a bit mad. Trying to explain it is often met with confusion unless I have visual aids.

Of the 32 bit era it's my favourite system. Not for nostalgia - I bought in after it was dead. But because I discovered it offered various games I couldn't experience anywhere else.

It's 2024 and there's still not really anything quite like (or as good) as the original Dragon Force. Not even its own sequel. Nothing like Dark Savior. Nothing as divine as Panzer Dragoon Saga.

You know the rest of this list. A long list of defiant weirdness.

Even the games with similar equivalents, like Bulk Slash. Sure there are mecha games on PS3 et al. But Bulk Slash had so much colour.

I prefer Saturn because there's a unique flavour found nowhere else.

And if I'm wrong, please tell me! Because I really, REALLY want to scratch that Dragon Force itch.

@sdelfin
And the worst thing? What sanctimonious ***** the authors are when you try to point out these problems.

The PCE / TG16 fan scene is populated by the most unpleasant human beings I have met on the internet.

Their responses range from "you should only be using original discs not pirating" to "you need to learn how to use command lines" or "it works for me so it must be fine".

Not one of them seems remotely interested or capable of creating a functional emulator that works as smoothly as various others.

There's a forum they all hang out on. Half the members are banned. Most of them dislike me immensely. Last I checked there was a forum topic dedicated to trash talking me. Utterly loathsome sub-humans.

second message
@sdelfin
So I ended up in this super ****ed up situation where I'd try to download a game, and to save download space it'd be data and APE files, or WAVs, or some crap I had to convert. When I tried ripping my own discs there'd be errors, or bytes out of alignment. Or I'd download a single ready to burn ISO which the emus couldn't handle, because the authors are idiots and only allowed mixed file folders.

So I would then burn this ISO to CD-RW, then I would rip this CD-RW into the required mixed data/audio format. Every. Single. ****ing. Time. And I did it over 50 times to play the games I wanted.

So I'm ready to go, right? I've download an ISO, burned it to CD-RW, then ripped that to iso/mp3 format, and I have the correct cracked emu (because I refuse to pay for crap that won't work right), so now, at last, I can play? Right?

Nope!

Do you have a TOC? Do you know what a TOC is? Without a TOC nothing runs! So I try to make a TOC using the ripping program and CD-RW disc. "Sorry this TOC does not match the directory of files". So I try downloading a TOC. "Sorry this TOC does not match the game you are trying to load."

Eventually I swapped to MednafenX on the OG Xbox, which came with every TOC. I had to rip all my games as usual, but I could select the right TOC from a list and force it to run. No PCE CD emulator should ever ask about TOC. These should be baked in and auto-detected. Why?! WHY does it even ask for a TOC and refuse to run without one? Logically I cannot understand this. If it needs a TOC to function then it should come with TOCs. They're not like BIOS, they're a Table of Contents, so like a CUE file. But, you still needed a CUE file anyway! That's the insane thing! You needed a TOC and a CUE!

There were all sorts of sound problems. Audio mixing problems. And if I wanted a new game I'd have to go through the above 30 minute process.

I hated it! So eventually I just bought a PCE with TerraOnion.

Now?

Download game from CDRomance, enjoy.

No fuss. No problems.

I cannot fathom how in 2024 the PCE CD emu scene can be such an abhorrent trainwreck.

Look at BigP. For Jag CD games you just load and go. No fuss.

For PCE CD emulation... Let me ask you: have you got a TOC? Is it the right TOC? Does this TOC match the file length of the ISO data track? Did you name the data track and audio tracks correctly? Do those names match the CUE file? Is the TOC and the CUE file named correctly? Are you absolutely sure that god damned TOC is set-up right?

Rage inducing. Absolute rage inducing.

@sdelfin
Thanks for the polite write up. Kudos also for battling through with command lines. I too took the time to learn them, and then created BAT files to make it easier (specifically with CDi emulation; I ended up making a custom BAT for for each game). Once I learned how I felt only resentment for having been made to do so. Some authors claim it improves performance not having a GUI, but they're just lazy. GUIs have not impacted performance since after the millennium. Jeez, upgrade your rig if the few megabytes of RAM needed are dragging your system down.

So, PCE CD emulation. Good question.

I've since stopped even trying, and bought a PC Engine with a TerraOnion add-on to run CD games flawlessly. So maybe they fixed it in the last few years, I dunno.

But basically all the authors seem to be raging nutjobs who INSIST on making the interface as annoying as possible.

I'm just gonna list random things I despise about PCE CD emulation.

1) Scum authors who refuse to allow ISO use, forcing the need for the CD, because "I don't want to encourage piracy." Yeah, they can GTF. That system hasn't been commercially viable since 1993. This forces you to burn CDRW or image mount. I have never found a decent image mounting program that did not BSOD my to death. Every computer I've loaded DaemonTools or whatever on to has died in about a month. Malware? Probably.

2) Eventually some emulators starting allowing ISOs. Except not in any normal or easy to use way. I don't want to have to rip it into some weird data/audio ISO/MP3 mixed format. I just want to use one file ISOs.

Why can't they code this to work right? There's always some lame excuse about mixed data/audio being more accurate or some crap. Again, they can GTF with that childish nonsense.

Rich Whitehouse is a legend. He had (has?) cancer and still kept trucking with the emulator - and on PC it's flawless, including Jag CD support. I was tempted to buy a Jag again, but this emu is better than the real thing, with lots of neat QOL extras. So I bought a Jag controller and an adapter.

It's also the best emulator I've seen. Portable, no installs. Lots of easy to use options. Great filters. Just and click and go. No tricky set-up. I don't know why people like or use trash such as RetroArch - you spend hours fiddling and still nothing works! BigP just works, first time, no fuss. The rest of the emulation community can learn from Rich Whitehouse. (Is PC Engine CD-ROM emulation fixed yet? Because that has been a dumpster fire for over 20 years.)

I hope Rich finds success and money with this new release.

I'd like to play a SFII RPG akin to the Samurai Spirits RPG.

€5 for a port of a Nintendo game available elsewhere? Why would anyone pay €5 to play an inferior port when you can buy an accurate port from Nintendo for other systems?

I was ready to defend the guy assuming it was just a freebie. But this is well cheeky.

I'm not saying this because I want it without paying. I wouldn't play it if you gifted it to me.

But there's a big difference between fan-made games shared with everyone out of passion, which get unfairly taken down (ie: AM2R), and this, where a guy copied and then sells a copyrighted game.

I look at the intensity of emotion those customers are feeling, so strong that they're queueing and desperate to own a dinky little 8-bit title, and I ask myself: will I ever feel that level of excitement about a new game again?

I did in the past for some things. FF7. The N64. Valkyria Chronicles. But the volume has decreased with time, as has the intensity of excitement.

Age, or a reflection of where modern games are now?

@slider1983
Oh I know! I watched most of them back in the day. But given lack of time, and the fact I know the original gags, RTS' condensed commentaries on provide nostalgia, fill in episodes I missed, and provide insight, all in less time than it would take to rewatch the originals.

@GlamorousAlpaca
He condensed 10 episodes of GM (5 hours worth) into 90s minutes, with analysis, summaries, insight, and jokes.

I have zero interest in sitting through the original series, but he put the work into producing something analytical and entertaining. This is not a breach of copyright. It's transformative as someone said.

I fail to see the problem here.

I've been bingeing his GamesMaster series. Hilarious, wonderful work. Which led to me viewing his back catalogue of videos.

Baffled his entire channel was deleted. Nothing remotely offensive anywhere. Gutted actually. Was looking forward to my next binge.

YouTube today actually deleted one of the vids on my channel (non-game related). Been up for years. No problems.

Besides RTS, two other channels I follow got hit with demonetisation this past month.

The algorithm has def changed recently.