aaronsullivan

@Muddy_4_Ever Just because that can happen doesn't mean that is what happened here, of course. Haven't seen evidence of intent to fraud, myself, just people failing and potential customers and haters being angry about it. shrug

This was never a scam. Just a failure. When it was announced, it had potential for nostalgic Intellivision fans and casual gamers, but I thought the predicted release window was already too far out. I expected a tepid launch probably. Guessing the supply chain was not kind to this thing on top of all the other difficulties.

Remember folks, even the “big guns” screw up hardware launches quite often. It is not easy and recent events have humbled the biggest companies. For small, basically first-timers, it takes incredible determination and is so much more work than it looks like.

Not remotely a scam, though. There’s real software and games and heart and hope put into it. Just makes it more sad.

@Prof_Yoshtonics Was going to say that the Amico team seems to have at least set expectations and time to market more realistically. ... never noticed before but amico is the middle of Famicom. huh.

I'm hopeful for it, but it was always going to be a bit of a hard sell. Would have liked to see this Atari incarnation as well, but it is looking pretty doomed if you can't make basic payments to the chief architect of the hardware. :/

Not sure I have the budget for it, but I kind of love it. I do hope the crank can also charge the battery, but it's a nice analog input which is very interesting. Makes me think of bit.trip.beat and how great the analog motion control was for that — apparently the speaker is quite loud on this machine.

Those game developers are pretty great, too. There will be unique, innovative, or at least novel and fun games on here. Zach Gage is one of the reasons not to write off all mobile games, for instance, and he really understands how to make games that are fun to visit for short bursts and hard to put down for hours once you are hooked.

I'm probably going to end up with one just to try developing on it. Panic is a great non-game software company, too, and I'm very curious what they have cooking with the OS and dev environment/SDK.

@Quinnsdaddy11 Panic has been working on this device for years (before UGG) and, if I had to guess, Untitled Goose Game might be delayed because they wanted to beef up the content in light of the unexpected large positive response.

@jhewitt3476 I don't see this as a competitor with PS5 or Xbox whatever at all. It's much more in line with Nintendo-style consoles but feels, to me at least, in a different niche space. The price makes for a pretty good impulse buy, if nostalgia is triggered.

The timing might be a little late with the age of people who remember these games getting a bit high to have younger kids to share it with, but I see much more potential than you seem to, at least.

It has even managed to separate itself from mobile gaming by "banning" in-app purchases and dlc and going with low-priced smaller sized 2D games, many of which have nostalgic tie-ins.

Carves out a nice space, and hopefully the team expects it to be a modest to small-sized audience in the business plan.

It does have much more to prove, though.

Totally piqued my interest. Yes, let's see some games, but the idea of a destination to play with these old school ideas through a new modern lens and approach it from a novel angle with many pioneering names behind it sounds delightfully crazy and appealing to me.

Very targeted with strong opinions about gaming from an era of gaming that I experienced is bound to make this feel very separate from the other consoles, potentially in a good way.

After 2 years, I expect some of the rough edges to be sanded down (how about some tactile feedback on the shape and surface of that disc control-pad while still respecting the original), and there is plenty of time to reveal games more.

Also, the screen on controller was always a good idea never quite realized successfully — Dreamcast, GBA+GameCube, Wii U all had key deficiencies — so I'd love to see someone take another crack at it.

The kickstarter has proven there is a hungry market for a device with this kind of nostalgic power, so gaining additional investments and/or loans should be pretty easy. Those backers didn't know the specifics when they handed the money over, and as much as this information will scare some people, Atari can pretty much just launch a me-too console with their own properties on it.

My thing is, I just want a spinner for some games like Blasteroids and Tempest. This isn't going to it.

@Retron
Looked pretty direct to me and now you can know, thanks to @BensonUii and a Kotaku article.

@Damo If you haven't really played through Assault Suit Leynos, just admit that instead. Valken was short, streamlined, and had shallow strategy and technique, in comparison. Looked better, though, obviously. I'd call the music a draw.

Anyways, I always loved my SNES far better than my SEGA Genesis, but Herzog Zwei and "Target Earth" were two of my favorite games. When I discovered "Cybernator", I was so excited that it was the same franchise, but then disappointed that they dumbed it down to a simple arcade game.

Obviously, you had a different experience with the games!

@GrailUK I kept expecting footage of Cybernator to show up, but I didn't see it. Was it in there? Great game, but "Target Earth" was better, which reminds me I haven't played the remake and I even own it.

Animator is really onto something with their process. Not sure how many worked on this but if it's one, it's very impressive. It has the look of expensive 90's anime.

The dialogue and point of the video is perplexing though. Am I supposed to despise his snarky attitude? Is the game teaching him a lesson or just proving him right? It's sloppy and unsatisfying storytelling.

Overall, it's about the realization of the R-Type game as an anime-reality, though, and that part is great.

@Splatburst @Action51
I remember true rivalry emerging after the Genesis advertising campaigns. I had owned Master System and NES, the Genesis and SNES, then there was PC games, too. My friends and I would try different games on everything and trade and have sleepovers when one of us got something the other didn't.

I did not understand what was happening when people started badmouthing one or the other. It was weird. When I had less time to commit to games and Sega started releasing new consoles fast and I was split up by distance from my friends I saw the attraction of convincing yourself you weren't missing out because you couldn't try them all. I would just kid around, but people took it serious. So childish, really.

Still, I'd really enjoy when my friend would visit from out of town who was always keeping up on the systems I didn't have. So much fun to try all the different flavors of gaming. Spiteful advertising and internet hate trains really do a disservice to the hobby as a whole.

I'm actually pretty impressed with this. The pricing doesn't even seem too bad for arcade-perfect: an idea that no one cares about now but was a big deal back then.

Never knew about this, but I have used that controller.

I remember seeing these in a story and I just couldn't fathom it. I wasn't put off by the animation too much but was aghast at the technical disaster. I had already acknowledged that a huge part of what made Nintendo action games better than computer games was the control and consistent fast frame rate. I fell for this guy and his team as the hardware failed them from the get go.

Love Yar's Revenge, though.

@tom_q @PricessEevee9
Diddy Kong Racing is probably still my favorite kart racer. Would always rather have more of these than Mario Kart.

Still love Mario Kart right from the first one until now, but Diddy Kong was the direction I wish Mario Kart had gone in.

@Luke8400
I never owned Mario Kart 64 either back in it's day. I own it on Virtual Console now and I did play it an awful lot with friends family though.