gingerbeardman

It's really curious why they would change this date, and specifically to a date that coincided with the Saturday after E3 in 2009. I suspect we'll never know the real reasons, or the real history of a game whose origins are still shrouded by the iron curtain. Hank and Alexey's story has changed frequently over the years, this 1985/4 date change is just the most perplexing.

The 1993 interview cited also says it was created in "three weeks", which means if it was first playable in June 1985 it certainly seems that it must have been created not long before then.

Given that this happened 15 years ago now, the "new" date is pretty embedded in the public record. The "old" date had existed for 20 years from 1989 to 2009. Thankfully we have printed material, scans on Internet Archive, Wayback Machine, and Wikipedia's own edit history function we have more than enough information to call upon to see through historical revisions like this.

@RetroGames Nicalis were the Limited Run Games of their day, eh? The less said about each of those companies the better.

Bought Platypus game the same day (night, it was at the BIT2002 event) as BlitzBASIC which was the start of my second wind as a game developer. Some 21 years later one of my games appeared on the ArsTechnica GOTY 2023 list. I'll try to work a bit quicker for the next one LOL

@Damo a real shame that Nicalis could do that. Always read the small print, eh!?

Looks great. Been following on Twitter and wish the guy all the luck in the world.

It also made me remember 90s Arcade Racer, and Nicalis. Sigh. Let's hope he can avoid a situation like that.

Great stuff! How long were you in Japan and what types of places did you stay at during your trip?

The bad thinking behind this name gives me pause on the whole thing. I'll definitely be more cautious and patient rather than jumping straight in.

It's curious how the name could be so wrong, but the hardware seems so right? I'd guess different people are involved.

It's interesting to note how the original device would have changed in terms of both size (thicker) and price (more expensive) if it had included this front lit screen.

Wow these guys have gone right through the bottom of the barrel and are still digging!

I first played this on the Atari ST, loved it. The graphics are full of inuendo. And the arcade version has a secret second set of levels with different graphics!

Can't wait for this one.

I also learned to program, apps and games, on an Atari ST using GFA BASIC. It was mind expanding.

Better link for the game: http://www.dactar.ch/st/games/

Technically great, especially the screen, but I'm not keen on the choice of colours or stripes. And the version of Tetris looks quite messy visually.

My top 3

• ST Format
• Super Play
• Electric Brain

Just a small point: Japanese trade magazine Game Machine was digitised by Onion Software (related to Onion Games/LOVEdeLIC) on behalf of Amusement Press.

https://onitama.tv/gamemachine/archive.html

I know because I'm the one that disseminated them onto internet archive. I did so in two batches (in 2019 I uploaded issues 1977—1990, and in 2023 I uploaded the remaining issues 1991–2002) as they were digitising them at steady pace over multiple years.

Whoever has duplicated only up to 1996 must have grabbed them part way through.

I had no idea about this! I could have and would have gone.

@BulkSlash what's to stop save states being done the SD2SNES way in FPGA cores? IIRC it injects an in-game hook code into the running game to add the feature. So they'd be largely external and unrelated to the FPGA core.

Great approach!

@Poodlestargenerica the only other two 3DS games Altron did are Disney Infinity: Toy Box Challenge and Finding Nemo: Escape to the Big Blue.

Whilst the Disney game does creature some scenes of similar scope to the WWE Brawl game it would be a stretch to suspect they share anything.

Altron are famous for rebranding their Japanese games as additional titles and/or Western releases. I wonder if this matches up with any of their other games?

It's great that they now have the name of it on there only once (previous design had it twice) but this box with chamfered edges needs more curves! Both the MD and SNES were full of curves.

@BHPM how many and how frequently can they happen before they can no longer be classed as mistakes but rather deliberate can't give a damn about customers? For me this point passed years ago.

I once created some cheat codes to do this in a PS1 golf game that didn't support certain camera angles during putting. I mapped them to a button, effectively adding a feature to the game.

Also there's a game with this viewpoint in PlayStation, Rush Hour, by the developers Clockwork Games who went on to make Vanishing Point (DC/PS1). https://www.mobygames.com/game/3111/rush-hour/

@Damo I'm interested why you've only @'d me about this and not the first poster in this thread? Of course, I don't know, but I can take an educated guess. 😘

@Damo we know that the buyer doesn't want to say what he paid the guy for it, which is alarm bell number one, but he does say that it was the "DEAL OF A LIFETIME!!!!" which indicates that he paid far less for it than it's worth. Seems pretty clear cut.

Scoring a bargain is indeed a pleasure, but actively seeking a person out, exploiting them, and then boasting about it on social media is just ...not cool.

The main gist of my earlier message was to be excellent to each other. There's no shade or negative reaction. Just me saying "that's not cool" when we should be treating each other with respect.

@Poodlestargenerica my thoughts exactly. He wasn't happy enough scalping the faceless corporation, so he looked the guy up to scalp him in person. Not a great way to treat other humans. Pay the guy what you know it's worth! Be excellent to each other.

I think it's a bit soon to give them a break considering how recently their recent bad behaviour was, and how frequently they've done these things since they were founded. They're never doing to change. The problem is too deep rooted.

I love that this guy's surname is McIntosh (Macintosh)

Fonzie trolling for sure. That crazy cat.

I'm also seeing the stock isn't a problem

https://twitter.com/alexfkraus/status/1784954628007682204

What others are there then Delta?

It's a shame they don't disclose where or how they found this.

What a non-apology. This company is such a bad example, yet for some reason (FOMO?) people keep lining their pockets with money.

“People are still interested in old stuff” 🤦‍♂️

I liked the found Game Boy story.

I found some period FAQs and Japanese coverage:

• http://ddz.la.coocan.jp/bulk.html
• https://maedahiroyuki.com/20190307-とんがりギャルゲー紀行%E3%80%80第67回：バルクスラッシ/
• http://kisaragi.g3.xrea.com/saturn/sht2.html#bs

These all say extra chats, bonus wallpapers, and additional ending for each MISS as your level/score increases. @Sketcz

@MSaturn I'm still creating written FAQs and translation guides in 2024. My first FAQs were for WipEout 2097 and Motor Toon Grand Prix in 1996 https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/community/msephton/contributions/faqs

As of this morning, the game is playable using dpad and buttons.

Experiments being tried include using the crank to adjust heading.

Progress has been good so far, and there are some optimisations under way thanks to information provided by Gustavo Pezzi (of Pikuma.com computer graphics tutorials/courses)

Not cool to publish somebody else's work without permission.

I'm using it to play my favourite one button DS game, MaBoShi, and the whole screen is a button so the lack of physical controls isn't an issue. I made a custom skin with custom layout.

https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2024/04/18/per-game-skins-in-the-delta-classic-video-game-emulator-for-ios/

Really Great.

Wow I'm sitting on a fortune with my copies of the first two books.

No console needs to have its name printed on it twice. That tells me all I need to know about this project.

This is looking slick so far, even though most of the graphics are placeholder.

ps: Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge was already released for the Atari ST back in the day (I bought it with my pocket money) what this guy and his team did was optimise it for the emhanced Atari STE hardware (mostly smoother scrolling, improved sound) https://github.com/jonathanopalise/lotus-ste

It's only the level/map data that is extracted from the source code, not the viewer. The viewer app (actually, apps) are totally new and custom.

https://github.com/JDrocks450/StarfoxView

Would be a perfect fit for Playdate. Crank to rotate.

@Sketcz i didn't mean buying the items they're selling off, as you say there are ways to do that.

What I meant it getting access to their collection and archive for research purposes. I've contacted Joseph in the past but due to Japanese laws he couldn't give me remote access to anything.

Interesting.

Also their archive seems to only be accessible in person, typical for Japan. They have a ton of stuff, but for anybody outside Japan it could as well be in another castle.

Without Flicky (Sega, 1984) there'd certainly be no Sonic.

@XiaoShao regarding the economics, a game with a list price of $6 means the developer will see ~$3.75 after all deductions (store, payment processor, currency exchange). And they'll need to pay tax on those earnings.

On iPhone you might be able to make a living from a $0.99 game, especially if you also monetise the player. But with Playdate there aren't enough devices to go for quantity, and thankfully the platform is free from microtransactions and ads. Pure gaming in the old school sense.

@romanista I also bought the Tetris type game, I read it's the version that adheres most closely to the guidelines. That's enough for me tbh.