TransmitHim

This guy is absolutely wild but what I don't get is why RetroBit, as a publisher, outsourced the entire translation process for these four games (seemingly simultaneously?) to just one guy to hack instead of getting actual professional programmers to work with a professional translator.
I'd say it's shockingly unprofessional, but it's not actually that shocking given the state of these fly-by-night retro publishers.

"If someone is willing to pay over two grand for a scary puppet based on Kazooie, one would assume that there was enough demand for a new game in the series,"

Not really, it just means there's one person who would very happily buy one copy.

@John_Deacon No it would just be straight up piracy. I know that's a loaded term and I'm not using it to be judgmental, but that's just what this kind of cart does.

@slider1983 What London-centric nonsense. Culture, businesses and people survive quite happily outside of the M25 you know.

@MontyMole You realise the video you're using to disprove Kate Willaert's argument is by Kate Willaert, right?

@Wakkawipeout Ah right, I wasn't sure how well it sold tbh, it's just that there's been no sign or a sequel (vs Splatoon getting two on Switch alone).
But I would say ARMS, with its better motion controls and then the distance fighting, has that new angle Punch-Out!! would need to get a new game.

I would think the biggest impediments to a new Punch-Out!! are:
1) ARMS
2) The muted success/arguable failure of ARMS.

Shouldn't PEGI have noticed this in the first place when they rated the game? Or is this another one of those "we actually just let the publisher guess what rating they should have and go with it" situations?

"Not only was this possible, it almost happened in reality in 1990. A CD-ROM expansion for the NES was developed by Codemasters but it was scrapped before hitting the market."

Except that linked article has someone from Codemasters saying they never made one or attempted to, their distributor announced it without them saying.

There's some impressive technical stuff to this project, but that doesn't necessarily translate into commercial interest.

Wait, she dies?!?

"which rather misses the point that thousands of video games are currently out of print, with no legal means of obtaining them"

This is also true of out-of-print but in-copyright books, music, movies, TV shows and more, none of which libraries are making their own copies of to distribute because it is blatant piracy. Games are not special in this regard.

"Legally inaccessible through practical means".

And as ever, just because something is out of print, doesn't mean it's entirely unobtainable. Second hand markets exist. No-one has gone around and destroyed every NES and copy of 8 Eyes, it's out there in the second hand market if you want to play it. I'm sick of "preservationists!" acting like using a past gen console and second hand game is somehow an insurmountable hardship.

"Such a viewpoint ignores the fact that libraries loan commercially available books for free, and this doesn't harm the publishing industry"

No they don't. It's free for readers, but authors are paid royalties for library loans, which hasn't been mentioned as part of the VGHF's plan here, which - as ever - seems to amount to "I should be able to have free access to everything I want". Also, libraries buy their copies of physical books (and other media), the number of which factors into their capacity for lending. This is entirely different to them freely sharing a ROM or ISO. It's closer to eBooks and audiobooks, licences for which are charged at higher rates than physical books, not available for all titles and some publishers put strict usage limits on them.

"in fact, you could argue that it does the exact opposite, as people who read books tend to recommend them to their friends, generating more potential sales."
Except, as per the premise of this entire enterprise, these games aren't otherwise available apparently. So per VGHF's plan the word of mouth would only lead to more of these "digital loans" that VGHF haven't factored royalties into. Plus, their entire argument is on this flimsy premise of it being for "researchers", this pretence of academic integrity, not commercial. And if you want to actually take that "researcher" argument on faith consider that libraries pay through the nose for access to academic journals, digital or otherwise. Which again isn't being mentioned as part of VGHF's great plan of getting free stuff.

"Bad nostalgia" completely misses the entire root of nostalgia itself, which comes from the Greek "nostos" (return home) and "algos" (pain). Nostalgia is always tinged with negative connotations, the yearning for a place and time long gone.

@Porco They just blank out part of the trademarked logos in the listing pictures. The actual product will fully say "Playstation".

"According to @summoningsalt, this was achieved on version of the game which has been modded to prevent it from crashing before the loop happens."

So they modded the game to do a thing and it did it? How is this noteworthy?

"Martin remained sanguine on the prospect of a legal challenge from Sega, saying that "if we receive some complaint, then for sure we will change the name, but I think that we will not.""

Then they're idiots. Using another company's name to raise money to make a product that infringes their patents, copyright, trademarks and IP? A great way to get sued.

None of those features seem worth the effort of modding over tracking down a SGB2.

I'll believe it works properly when I see it. The use of AI buzzwords doesn't fill me with confidence.

"If you have any great memories or anecdotes about Amstrad products you've owned over the years"
Ha, good luck sifting for positive ones in all of that.

Another example of the audiophile-style nonsense creeping into the retro gaming scene.

I don't understand the desire to have a GC stick on an N64 controller (beyond companies wanting to shift a presumably cheaper/easier to produce stick to people desperate for any kind of replacement). It's an entirely different style of analogue stick and can't match the intended functionality of the N64.

@Bonggon5 🙄 Wow really helpful contribution there little buddy. So insightful! No no, don't bother actually explaining any of why it's difficult, just make blanket assertions with nothing to back it up.

I’m going to assume, given you’ve resorted to the Dullard’s Deflection Of Criticism that you actually haven’t the first clue how this is done and so assume that if you can’t do it must be difficult (like making a meaningful contribution to a discussion - don’t worry, you’ll manage it one day!)

Given there’s no context for the hacker’s assertion from them, Time Extension or indeed you, I looked into it myself. It is more complicated than I realised - the GBC doesn't store palette information the way I thought which means it's more involved than a quick and dirty tile hack, requiring some coding knowledge. But following this tutorial - https://toruzz.com/blog/how-to-colorize-gb-games-first-steps/ - it's not the most complex bit of rom hacking out there. More tricky if a) you have to do some edits to the graphics to make the palettes apply correctly, but doing some comparisons between their promo video and sprite sheets, they don't appear to have, b) if the graphics are compressed, but I don't know if they are, because again the hacker, Time Extension and again you, haven't given that information.

So yeah, plausibly the most "ambitious" hack this hacker's ever done (and again without crucial context, that's hard to assess, which was my point entirely to begin with - I could validly calm that me pulling off an ollie would be the most ambitious skateboarding trick I've ever done, but that's because I've never used a skateboard in earnest) but not the most ambitious complicated hack ever imagined.

Not that it doesn't look nice and that this - "This has grown into my most ambitious project ever," - is necessarily an exaggeration, but is colouring in the original GB graphics and recompiling it that arduous a process?

@Blast16 Do you know how incredibly unhelpful it is to pop up when someone's talking about a problem they've had - in this type of situation or any other frankly - to go WELL I'VE NEVER HAD A PROBLEM SO MAYBE YOU SHOULD ALL STOP WHINING AND JUST GET A REFUND. Your experiences don't negate anyone else's. Your "advice" is both patronising and unfeasible. LRG aren't going to give you a pat on the head for your cheerleading, so maybe just wind your neck in?

""The market research said no one wanted to play Black Widow""

Market research consisting entirely of Ike Perlmutter? I mean, to be fair, it's not out of the realms of plausibility that Black Widow didn't come up very high in a list of characters that people want to play as, compared to some of Marvel's others. But it's hard to believe that a Platinum game starring her would have crashed and burned.

Thanks for this. I borrowed a copy of Buster Busts Loose from a friend as a kid and really liked it for the brief time I had with it. Years later, I bought a copy and was disappointed to find how it had been butchered.

I think this is fairly common for second-hand book shops that move into other mediums, especially games. World of Books, a pretty large second hand book retailer online in the UK, has a video games section and some of the prices are mad. A used copy of 51 Worldwide Games on Switch for £67.99 for instance. Who knows how they came to that figure.

The second SNES one. It blows the first, especially the western localisation, out of the water. Such a shame it wasn't localised. The first game ends up being a fairly tedious cost of living simulator as you have to continually grind for money to get armour and shoes and that goal increasing every time you take a hit and need to further replenish them for an ever increasing price. The sequel ditches all that nonsense and is just fun. And has nicer graphics.

I don't think there's necessarily a problem with supplying a PC game on a USB stick (arguing that USB-A is becoming obsolete is a strange position for buying a retro game also available on obsolete cartridge formats and in favour of it being on CD instead), but putting it on the cheapest possible type (I can back up what one of the quoted twitter posts says, that style of USB stick was frequently used for freebies, because they're cheap AF) and charging £35 for it as a collector's item is taking the mick.

Like, I can see a world where USB sticks became a post-optical drive distribution format for retail, or certainly indie, PC games if Steam hadn't made digital ubiquitous. But we're not living in it and it's bizarre for premium nostalgia-predators like LRG to act like we are.

@MARl0 Yeah, it felt like one of those features designed for urban Tokyo and not really anywhere else. I think the only hits I ever got outside of a relay were at a comic convention and once randomly at home, where I guess someone passed by close enough to trigger it.

I do really like the concept though.

@PKDuckman But it was an online tournament. Perfect during COVID restrictions (which were easing and would have been gone by the next year anyway).

Ah Incube8, still forcing people to go through a checkout process and provide personal info just to get a digital demo. You'd think the fact that they have to put a disclaimer on the product page about not needing a credit card to "order" demos would have been enough to make them realise it's a stupid process, but I guess not.

So it's, essentially, a device that lets you pirate games and it's installed DRM out of concerns of people pirating it? Man, irony really is dead.

@XiaoShao Either they've made up a poor excuse after the fact or they didn't properly research their product before selling and manufacturing it. I'm not quite sure why either option should elicit sympathy. They're either liars or idiots.

Looking into it quickly, it seems St Giga carried on repeating their SNES broadcasts after their association with Nintendo fell apart, which would suggest they retained rights to it all. They went bankrupt, their material was bought by World Independent Networks Japan who later went bankrupt. So who knows who owns all that now.

I think the only Satellaview game that's been reused was Fire Emblem, the maps from which were included with the DS remake of Mystery of the Emblem (which didn't get released outside of Japan).

It's strange really, because you'd think the prospect of being able to release "new" SNES games to the West (and "forgotten" games to Japan, really) would have appealed to Nintendo at some point in the past twenty years. But then, they've still never released StarTropics in Japan, so ::shrug:: Maybe there's some kind of rights issue with them.

@OlivusPrime Seriously? That's mad. Game Boy cart pcbs have been around for decades, it shouldn't be difficult to make one successfully, especially for a company that is supposedly all about physical media.

I've got one of the Street Fighter IV Fightpads for the 360 (not an arcade stick but a Saturn style six button pad with, crucially, a bigger d-pad than the official 360 controller). That was pretty good and still gets use as a PC controller thanks to being USB. So they weren't always terrible. Just usually terrible.

@MSaturn Some video guides can be helpful, mainly when needing to navigate somewhere and a written explanation is too vague or woolly, but written walkthroughs/FAQs definitely still have their place, especially over wikis, which are often on ad-riddled sites like Fandom. If I'm quickly looking something up on my phone while playing a game, dealing with a Fandom page is in no way convenient vs loading up a GameFAQs text page.

I adored Shardlight but I found Lamplight City disappointing on several fronts (the overly-chatty, patronising ghost that would bluntly spell out what you needed to do as soon as anyone gave a clue; the dodgy animated portraits; the inability to investigate at your own speed at times) but it seems like Gonzalez is addressing those issues here. I love a Western too, so I guess I'm getting my hopes up for this.

"already spotted that Link exhibits slightly different behaviour when exiting a cave. "Link remains under the ground at his last position for one frame before teleporting to the cave entrance,""
Hopefully there'll be something actually interesting to come from this comparison because man, that is not.

I loved Scavengers, but I was 7 at the time. I remember finding the way they'd wipe out/kill contestants who didn't get back to the ship in time at the end actually kind of chilling.

Either that was a very restorative fire or you've got the before and after photos the wrong way around.

Hope they're able to hit their target and re-open, though you'd hope insurance would be covering a lot of this.

It was definitely Ultimate Play The Game. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play my favourite games from EA Sports It's In The Game.

Metroid 2 already has a preset palette on the SGB and it's better than this one. The border... eh, it's a little busy for my tastes.

"But while most people would be tempted to try and keep an amazing collection like this all to themselves,"

No, well-heeled collectors setting themselves up as a retro game museum is getting pretty standard now.

I don't think I've ever seen JRPG as a derogatory term. It's an odd advertising campaign because it is highlighting some of Fallout's strengths but ***** on the more popular genre in the target country to do so is... not a great way of doing that.

A bit odd as their crowdfunding page for getting a scanner has already hit 125% of its total. Unless that surged up since they put out a statement about selling the (duplicate) family silver, I guess.

"The fact that Mario Sunshine would be able to run on an N64 is pretty crazy (This is a real hardware recording and I did not optimize this level at all)"

This is a pretty disingenuous statement. It's not Mario Sunshine, it's a facsimile.

The Hall Of Fame already has a lot of entries covering the obvious big hitters people surprised aren't on this list (Mario, Zelda, Tetris, Halo, WoW, Sonic, Pac-Man, Barbie Fashion Designer). Finding this out is a bit tricky though, as the museum's webpage for it is pretty glitchy. Might be worth editing the article to make this clear though.

"Ant juices" presumably being formic acid?