That's pretty awesome! The Top Gear games are great. Personally, I would have preferred an actual mini arcade cab in the style of the upright versions of Outrun, Chase HQ etc, rather than in the style of a Colleco tabletop, but for those that collect them or have nostalgia for them this is really neat.
@farrgazer I had one of those! I've seen a few videos where people have modded them with a Rasberry Pi and a real screen to play racing games. So cool!
@-wc- Just so you know, you're replying to comments from 2015, before the Switch was even a glint in papa Miyamoto's eye. Many of the comments you see are from people who dont even use this site.
This keeps confusing me as well, it's very easy to miss. It happens because they are slowly migrating old retro content from Nintendolife, PushSquare and Pure Xbox to this site instead... and when they do, the old comments come across, but it appears in the feed as if it's a brand new post. 😅
I keep being conflicted because some of these dredged up old articles are things that I want to chat about, but never know if people will bother commenting or if they ignore the old reposts, or would think it's weird to comment on an old article.
In any case, I really like Eternal Darkness, and would 100% buy a Switch version, even if just a simple up-res like Pikmim 1&2.
@Damo I appreciate the response man, thanks. I appreciate (and tried to make clear, apologies if I didn't) that the angle of the stories was different, just the core subject. It's the fact they appear at the same rough time frame that causes the confusion, or even apathy... as I said, often I refrain from commenting on an article that I usually would have, because I don't want to comment on both one after another anf have 2 articles to check back on and read responses to etc.
I don't think it's just me that has that reaction. As I said, I often see articles here with zero or very few comments, where the corresponding article from the same day on NL (or PS/PXB) has lots of comments. That unnecessarily harms this site, because it will lower SEO and also look like less people are interested in the articles for people (or advertisers!) clicking on them. I don't want that to happen, as I really love this site and want it to grow 😀
Perhaps a simple solution is to just gently stagger articles with a same core subject a day apart, and make it more like a series ("check our sister site Time Extension for more on Dylan Cuthbert tomorrow"! Etc then just add the link the day after). I certainly know that by the next day I'd be more inclined to post again, as would many, as evidenced by the big amount of posts under multiple Sonic posts in the same week, for example.
I'm aware part of the point in this site especially is for many of the articles to be evergreen historical content, but the day you first post is important because the vast majority of comments and interactivity come the days it's posted as it's at the top of the feed, and early performance of a blog article is very much taken into account by Google algorithm for recommending the site to external users.
Anyway, just some unsolicited advice that you can of course freely ignore! 😂 but it comes from a place of wanting this site to succeed and grow. Your involvement specifically makes this a (the?) natural successor to the classic magazines that we all grew up reading in the 90s and respects and covers the period so well. That's why I stick around 😊
@-wc- I feel that with all art/media the creators or original owners (ie those who either funded its creation, or purchased it from those original creators for distribution rights) should be able to sell and profit from it for as long as they want to, until the copyright expires.
However, in all cases (games, music, movies) once the original artist/owner no longer wants to sell them, or the rights are basically untraceable and unprovable, they should immediately become free to distribute. Doesn't have to be public domain, there are Creative Commons attributions where they are free to share as long as you don't sell them. Similar to what people label as "Abandonware" though the majority if that is no more legal than distributing roms.
To be clear, I personally support downloading and sharing of roms, old cracked games etc, as long as they are not available to purchase anywhere, I see no moral issue, regardless of legality. As an artist myself, I'm aware that once you release something commercially for a wide audience, it is no longer just yours, it becomes part of people's story of their lives. To suddenly remove access to it seems wrong to me.
In other words, if old games companies keep wanting to sell copies of their games from the 80s and 90s to new generations, I think that's good, and it's their right. However, if they don't have any intention of allowing people to access them through legal means, they should allow others to share them for free. And crucially, others who had nothing to do with funding or creating them in the first place should not be allowed to claim ownership, for reasons I'll cover below.
I'm aware that's all a massive over simplification and there's plenty of exceptions and whataboutisms but I feel thats a broad sensible starting point for the way forward. I agree with your sentiment (if I understood it) that having games for sale shouldn't be the priority. For me, the priority should be accessibility, and the copyright holders can choose if they want to profit, or waive their rights and give their old work to the fans 😀
There's an enormous unspoken sickness in the retrogames community with opportunistic leaches "buying the rights" to games, characters, hardware or company names/logos that they had nothing to do with creating, often for literal pocket change (£1-10 each!!!)... then cynically releasing hugely overpriced and poorly put together compilations, hardware etc to make money from the nostalgia of retro collectors.
Even worse, some of the biggest offenders even use their new found "ownership" to make copyright claims on YouTube videos, retrogame books, articles, blogs, documentaries... claiming tens of thousands in revenue from clicks through DMCA claims that Youtube/Google just grant without question. Spend £10, threaten lawsuits, YouTube transfers you thousands. Rinse and repeat. Even worse again, some of these individuals running this scam DON'T even have the technical legal ownership rights they claim to... they just grift that they do and rely on people not bothering or being able to afford to force them to actually prove it.
Its a sickness and I hate the abuse of our collective memories. It's ruined the lives of friends of mine. I've been harassed myself. Thankfully, I have entertainment lawyers backed by the huge companies I work with to help me out on the occasions I'm targeted. But many aren't as lucky and simply can't defend themselves against this fraud.
Sadly, pushing the selling old long forgotten retrogames, rather than legal free distribution, encourages and validates this behaviour. Of course companies that are still in business like Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, Konami et al should capitalise from their old catalogues. But companies that haven't existed for 30 years cannot possibly accept royalties, so these vultures sweep in and take over. In my opinion, the law is outdated, and being able to claim ownership of art that you didn't either create or fund simply shouldn't be possible. But I'm an artist who has lost control over a lot of my work over the years, so I'll always side with the artists over unrestrained profit above morals style extreme capitalism.
Kelsey is someone I admire a great deal and is consistently a great voice in the community. We dont really have any context here as to why she made this decision, I hope its just simply a case of "too many projects, too busy to give enough time to this thing I care about to do it justice" rather than anything more sinister. I wish her nothing but the best and will continue to enjoy her content and insights elsewhere.
This was a great read, thank you! I 100% agree that rather than an endless stream of remasters/remakes of cherry picked obvious titles, making all/most old games still available to new audiences would be a better priority. Of course, the movie industry constantly re-releases big titles either as extended/directors cuts, 4k remasters etc too, but you can also easily get access to most notable movies from decades ago through a variety of options. Videogames haven't managed that second part yet.
However, I nearly didnt comment on this article... not to rant, but I literally just wrote a comment about Dylan Cuthbert and Star Fox under the article on Nintendolife. It keeps happening recently that different articles but about the same core subject are posted on both sites at once... I can't speak for others but I find this a little annoying, and also confusing. I nearly didn't click and read the article as I thought it was the same one. And in all other cases where this has happened, I've not commented on an article I usually would have done, because I don't want to double up or split my thoughts between both. I reckon others feel the same way as I've noticed in those occasions, the NL article will get lots of comments and the TE one get zero, when it usually would have been popular. That can't be good for engagement based SEO.
I don't mean to complain, I love these sites. That's why I take time to make (hopefully thoughtful and interesting to some) comments. I'm offering constructive criticism on a point I haven't seen anyone else raise. Keep up the good work everyone 😇
@ludotaku Oh, that's really cool, thank you for posting that! I've been really trying to improve my ability to listen and understand French (my vocabulary is decent and I can read and write it at a reasonable level, and my pronunciation is apparantly good, but have a lot of difficulty understanding people speaking in real time).
I practice hard every day with various apps and I spend a lot of time listening to random French music and trying to understand the lyrics, and also watching kids TV shows in French (currently enjoying "D'Artagnan et les Trois Mousquetaires", great because I'm familiar with the English language version, and fitting because its based on French history and the Dumas books), and interviews with celebrities where I know a little about them or their projects (currently disecting old interviews with Alizée!) so I have a headstart and can fill in the blanks of what I don't catch.
I recently moved to France but right next to Disneyland and everybody in the vacinity is fluent in English. If you try and speak french to them to practice, they'll literally turn around and say "you're French is really good! Well done!" and then continue the conversation in English rather than try to understand your slow/broken French. I should put up a poster looking for a French friend who'll actually put up with my bad French so I can slowly make it less bad!
I really like that song! Very helpful for me that its slow and there is a pause between each line for me to process what was just said. Right away I recognised and understood the gimmick of the alphabet at the end of each line, and felt quite proud that I caught quite a few of the puns first time, like Pinocchi... O and BM... W, and "to break up with you, a letter isn't good enough, I need the whole alphabet". Really cool. Thats going in my rotation of songs to listen to and try and fully learn.
Yes. The old dude who made west end musicals. Guess he had a midlife crisis and overdosed on Gameboy and 2 Unlimited?
This will never not be funny to me:
The fact that "Super Mario Land" in the music video is represented by a dreary grey skied day in the car park of Chessington World of Adventures is too perfect, its like it was satire. 😂
Some people in these parts know that I used to ghost write for a lot of famous rappers before moving into the film industry. When working on the film Brotherhood, I met Stormzy, who discovered this past and encouraged me to make a song to promote the film.
It was a laugh, bit embarassing, but I didn't take it too seriously. The original VEVO upload got 1.2 million views! 🤯 But I took it down because of unfortunate revelations about some people involved with the film, so I no longer felt comfortable profiting from promoting it.
Anyway - I put many videogame sound effects into the instrumental, from Mario, Sonic, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat... a lot of very geeky references and wordplay, 80s and 90s references... in the VEVO thumbnail I was wearing a Saved by the Bell Kelly Kapowski shirt! 😍
Around the 3 minute mark I say "I'm ahead of the game, I've got a PS6!" and hold up a NES classic mini. The record label got it as a promotional item before the system was even released, and by the time the music video was out they were rare as hems teeth, so I thought it was a funny thing to flex, alongside the other more traditionally "cool" sponsored items like Beats headphones & Pill etc.
I get so confused when old NintendoLife articles get moved to this website, with the old comments intact. I thought we'd seen the return of several old online friends I haven't spoken to in years! 😂
As for Turok 1, as a launch day N64 owner and a dinosaur fanatic, it was a game that I was really hyped for when reading previews in magazines. But when eventually playing a rental copy, I found the fog made it near unplayable for me, sadly, and much of the time it felt like my new alledgedly superpowered console was being used to render an almost entirely white screen.
The sequels fared a bit better with me. However, that NightDive remaster finally allowed me to play and enjoy the game I'd been hyped for 20+ years before. There was always a good game underneath the technical limitations.
@Poodlestargenerica In general, all Sony hardware I've ever encountered has been of exemplary quality, high fi, walkmen, tvs, phones, dslr and mirrorless, pro cinema video cameras. At least the first models of every PlayStation.
That was why I was so shocked and angry at the PlayStation Classic mini, something that should have been an easy home run. I couldn't believe they messed it up so badly 😅
My slightly older "cool" friend who considered himself an audiosnob was using his launch day 1001 as a CD player through a very fancy amp & expensive custom built speakers back in 1995. It sounded amazing! Many nights as a teen getting h*** round his and listening to music waaaay too loud and getting complaints from the neighbours.
As a Saturn and N64 guy, when I finally broke down and bought a PlayStation of my own around 1998 when they were reduced to £100 and there were too many exclusives that I wanted, I was most annoyed that they cheaped out and removed the audio jacks.
@mjparker77 Thanks for the response, I didnt know they'd officially said that. I guess that makes sense. But it's easy to remap buttons in an emulator...
Perhaps the Megadrive port separated certain functions to different buttons whereas the Amiga version expected more complex combinations to get around the single button joysticks that were mostly standard? I honestly dont remember. Surely it can't be as simple as "we wanted to get rid of 'up to jump' as that's an easy fix.
I never had any problems with the Amiga controls feeling overly conveluted... I'm intregued now, I'll have to boot up them both in emulators and see!
@UK_Kev I knew the price decreased, but I hadn't made the same connection that the $300 price point was the same as the PlayStation launch price, and cheaper than the Saturn. Frankly, for me at the time, all of them seemed to be impossible price's I'd never be able to afford! That's fascinating that both Panasonic and Goldstar slashed the prices that much, that must have been to clear stock and was a sign of a death spiral, even though it in theory increased the user base of potential customers for games, I can't see many devs wanting to risk making new games for a console that was essentially discontinued. I saw the same thing happen with shops selling brand new 32X for £20 and amazing Dreamcast bundles with several good games fir £50.
I'm exactly the same as you in that I read and enjoyed all the magazines at the time, and was really interested and excited in all the "next generation" hardware and amazing CD, 32bit and 3D technologies and the potential they had. At the time, I had only just upgraded to 16bit consoles and was mostly buying second hand games for them. So things like the 3do, Jaguar, Cdi, 32X/CD and eventual PSX, Saturn, Ultra 64 all seemed like pipedreams of unimaginable sci-fi powers! Seeing the majority of them come and go, failing almost immediately because the new latest greatest was on the horizon was a real trip!
The upshot of all the failures was a year or two later I could actually afford all the "unafforable" systems, as no-one wanted them and were practically giving them away. I had fun exploring them all while I waited for PlayStation & Saturn to enter my price range. I've got a lot of live for the more obscure consoles and upgrades from that time period 😀
@Blast16 Yeah this is where I'm at with FPGA systems... Once everything from 8bit through 128bit are possible to be perfectly replicated, I'll jump on board, even if the price is that of a gaming PC. My reluctance to jump on the Mistr train is that systems like Saturn and DC can't run on it, and frankly, emulation of 8 and 16bit systems and computers is "good enough" to the point of basically perfect for what I want if you have a good enough pc... which I do, and that can also run the much newer systems, and of course modern games etc.
The various 32/64/"128" bit consoles are more spotty in their accuracy for PC, and getting the individual best options set up and running is a mission in itself. If we get to the point where an all in one box I can plug into my TV will meet the FPGA "promise" of being a 1:1 hardware recreation and therefore just run everything perfectly first time no questions... I'll be a very happy camper no matter what the cost.
Like you, my ideal is up to Dreamcast, PS2, GC and OG Xbox... but I'd settle for just DC, as long as the Saturn support is good. An all in one Sega box is the dream.
@UK_Kev Just wanted to say that your perspective on the quick and sudden death of the 3do is bang on. At the time, I remember thinking it was the most likely to succeed out of all the "interim" systems while all the others were dying, and it was growing the biggest and most respectible library... I was very aware of the M2 hype as well, to me it felt like the company/brand was around to stay. And then it seemingly disappeared overnight.
My theory was always that the console was simply too expensive, and once the PlayStation was released for cheaper, and being obviously better and with more quality third party support, that was the begining of the end. But I was still surprised by the fast decline, I figured it would be more a case of either a slow decline, or a "hail mary" price decrease and actually competing. Of course, nowadays I realise that wasn't possible, because the nature of 3do consoles being concieved as more of a "standard" for many companies to make compatible systems for meant they couldn't sell at a loss hoping to make a profit back on games.
But reading your posts, you are 100% right. It was the best selling, had the biggest and best library... BUT the biggest titles were ported to PSX, Saturn and PC meaning there was less reason to buy, and pushing the M2 so hard meant no-one new would buy the console, instead they'd wait... and just like that, in a 2-3 month window they went from a promising rising success to dead in the water because the competition was just too strong, could afford to sell at a loss, and poached all the biggest exclusives... no-one would have bought a 3do for Christmas that year, and PSX absolutely cleaned up, Saturn taking second place and 3do a very, very distant 3rd. Amazing how an entire supposed future proof "industry standard" can tank so quickly after a promising start and steady growth.
Thanks for the insight. As ever, I really enjoy reading your posts. Always knowledgeable and far better at being succinct than I am! 😂
@Krambo42 Oh absolutely the Amiga was barely a blip in the States this is mostly a European and especially British phenomena. Out of all the "Famous Amiga games" that were ported to the consoles, Flashback and Another World / Out of this World are the ones that saw most success on consoles, but still nowhere near the same attach rate per unit.
You'd be hard pushed to find a British Amiga owner who didn't have a copy of Flashback to show off the fancy intro graphics and rotoscoped sprites to their console owning friends. It was one of the most common games and piracy / copying friends' games and sharing was commonplace so basically there were like 20 Amiga games that literally everybody who owned an Amiga played, because they knew someone who had a copy, then made their own copy, shared it around etc.
Btw you're right that it was originally planned for Genesis/Megadrive release but then that was delayed for whatever reason (discs are far less financial risk than carts too!) and the Amiga version came out much earlier. Both machines had the same cpu and similar specs so it's quite easy to port between. The Amiga versions often have better music, and sometimes graphics are more colourful or more varied due to certain advantages. Genesis exclusive games are another story of course as they are able to be optimised for its strengths, but the Amiga ports are nearly always slightly worse.
I'd be interested to know how many other of the "famous" Amiga games that got less successful console ports you encountered in America? Ones that spring to mind are Speedball 2, Xenon 2, Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder, Gods, Puggsy, Zool, Syndicate, Chaos Engine, A-Train, Mega Lo Mania, James Pond, Shadow of the Beast, Jaguar XJ220, Fantastic Dizzy (or any Dizzy game for NES!), Chuck Rock, Bubba n Stix, Wolfchild, Sink or Swim.... I'm sure there's many more that others could point out. But certainly all of those titles were very well known on Amiga but wouldn't even break the top 100 sales on any of the consoles they were ported to.
Only other "Amiga first" games I can think of that had true success on consoles were Lemmings and Worms. Maybe Theme Park, but I think that's more associated with PC than Amiga.
@Krambo42 Don't get me wrong, I'm predominantly a console gamer and collector, far more so than Amiga or any other home computer.
It's just that certain titles were first available on Amiga, huge hits that defined the system and almost every owner played... and then a handful of the biggest of these games got console ports that were usually at least slightly watered down, and didn't sell very well because it was a different market with different competition.
So when people think of those games, they automatically think of the Amiga original and many aren't even aware that there was a console version, as they usually sold so poorly and we're overshadowed in marketing my the console exclusives. Something like Zool was huge on Amiga precisely because Amiga didn't have Sonic or Mario. Releasing it on the consoles was a bad idea, and the ports were half baked at best.
There has been quite a few games released on Evercade that were "system defining" big hitters for Amiga. Naturally the people gravitating towards buying the cartridges with these games were mostly Amiga fans. But then the games weren't the same as they remembered. Part of the confusion is that Evercade don't state which system the specific versions games they are selling are from.
There was similar confusion with people buying a collection of Dizzy games, and getting a bunch of mostly unreleased & unlicensed NES/Aladdin ports, when the majority of Dizzy fans were Spectrum/Commodore/CPC fans in the UK where the NES barely made a blip. Personally I think it's a wonderful collection, but I saw many people annoyed or confused. Same with the "Amiga" titles which ended up being Megadrive or NES versions. I saw particular anger in comments sections at people feeling swindled by Speedball 2, Xenon 2, Sensible Soccer, Canon Fodder, all being waterered down versions. Zool having entirely different levels confused the heck out of people.
When it comes to Flashback specifically, I think it ported pretty well to most consoles, though the SNES's cpu clearly couldn't handle the cutscenes. From what I remember, the Genesis version is fine. But it's not the original version the majority of fans of that game would have played. And being that they've now clearly managed to get an Amiga emulator working on Evercade, finally, it seems weird to still go with the console port. I wondered if I'm missing something, like if it's actually better in some way?
@mjparker77 @Krambo42 Yes, that's very strange... while I rejoice that finally we are getting Amiga versions of games on Evercade (having previously been saddled with console ports of famous Amiga games like Speedball 2 etc) I hoped this signalled that we were going to get the Amiga version of games predominantly made famous on that system now moving forward. Do we know the reason why they went with Megadrive/Genesis version of Flashback? Is it better in some way?
I could write a huuuuge long post (even bigger than my usual rants!) about these cartridges, covering my feelings on them all because I think all 4 are good collections and very worth owning.
However, I'll single out Sydney Hunter, because, as Damo put it: "perhaps the one that will be the hardest sell for most Evercade owners". I agree that its the one less likely to fly off the shelves. But I'm here to say that's a mistake.
These are really good games made by a talented and passionate team for numerous systems, through Intellivision through 8 & 16bits to a modern Steam release. This collection includes the Shrines of Peril for the Intellivision, The Sacred Tribe for the Master System, Jester for the NES, and Caverns of Death for the SNES. It even comes with a separate poster and a full map included on the back for the Master System title which is somewhat Metroidvania-esque, so having a physical map is really cool and reminds me of old times.
Getting 4 on one cart rather than having to seek out each individual original limited edition carts (which I thinkare all sold out now so its a reaseller/ebay thing!) saves money and time and makes them more accessible. Its a shame Mayan Adventure isn't on there too, I'd recomend checking that one out on Steam / Switch.
They are really nice games and if anything, while they may not have the nostalgia factor to play on, high quality retro-style games could be seen as more exciting than ones you already know and love, because its like travelling back in time and getting a new game from the store as a kid. (Though I'm biased, as a dev of various retro-style games!)
Again, all four of these carts have good games and are great value, but if I had to recomend a single one? I highly recomend giving the Sydney Hunter titles a try. Don't sleep on it.
@KingMike Hmmm, interesting, I've never directly compared the two! Mostly played various home versions of Sagaia and only played the arcade version a couple of times when seeing it in the wild over the years. Little changes between versions always intregue me, so I'll have to look into it. Thanks for that!
@XiaoShao "good" is subjective... it was more of an "interactive multimedia experience" than a true game. Fairly rudimentary point and click adventure with puzzles, and arcades mini games that are akin to what would eventually be early 2000s flash games.
However, the FMV, sound and music were excellent for the time and far more impressive than similar titles on Mega CD, CDi (without the optional videocard at least) etc. And the minigames, while simple, had pretty amazing graphics that wouldn't have been possible on the 16bits. In short clips on a commercial, they would have made it look like an incredible game! Watching longer clips of full gameplay would have instantly broken that illusion though! The 8 & 16 bit JP games were all significantly better to actually play.
So, is it worth playing today? Not really, other than as a historical curiosity. But at the time it would have been a technical showpiece that showed the potential of "interactive entertainment"... which was what was being used as a way to sell expensive hardware to parents as if it was educational and "not just a videogame". Sadly for kids whose parents bought into this idea, often the truth was "barely a videogame at all" !
Some people love these type of early 90s entertainment CD rom "experiences". I guess they are an acquired taste, like the "laser disc games" like Space Ace and Dragons Lair... which also had great ports for the 3dO. For people who like them, I guess the JP one is one of the best. The Mega CD title has worse graphics but is probably the better designed point and click adventure.
@Poodlestargenerica Yeah there's Alone in the Dark 1 and 2 on 3do. Also really good version of Flashback in addition to Out of this World.
It's difficult to quantify "other consoles of its time"... the 3dO was part of that awkward phase where Genesis, SNES, Amiga and DOS ruled the roost, but before the PlayStation, Saturn, N64, PCs with 3D accelerators...
Really the systems it should be compared to are Mega Cd, 32X, CDi, CD32, Jaguar, Jaguar CD, NeoGeo Cd, Pippin, PCFX, Virtual Boy, CDTV, and a few more that probably slip my mind right now. There seemed a never ending list of new systems trying to establish what the "next generation" would be like, but they were all about 3 years early to really get an impressive leap forward but at an afforable price.
While my personal allegiance was to stick with the Megadrive and add a Mega CD and 32X (really nice combined library if you can sift through the trash) I think it's arguable that the 3dO was the closest of all the systems of its ilk to give a vision of what was to come with the PlayStation. Trouble is, it wasn't quite as powerful, and was far to expensive. But for those with deep pockets, it was a taste of the future at least 18 months early.
Difficult to appreciate the novelty factor when looking back... but easy to understand how that lucky few that had one around launch were mind blown enough to still sing its praises decades on... a bit like how Dreamcast owners got to experience PS2/GC/Xbox quality games 28 months early, and felt gyped when it died.
@Damo Yeah that was my guess too. That's not something I've ever come across when doing IP deals before. Very unusual if so, especially for a retro property.
Obviously specific current IP like the latest movie in a franchise is different, of course... but thats paying EXTRA for the latest logos/art etc to ride off the success of the big marketing campaigns for the movie... so the exact opposite of our theory here.
Yeah it's a legal minefield. Asking for "donations" but using the IPs of others is opening yourself to lawsuits left right and centre. Even some individuals with virtually no profile earning peanuts get slapped with C&D for this kind of stuff all the time, you may get away with it for a while but it's a ticking timebomb.
In the case of Nightdive, they are an actual company with employees who are paid wages, they are well known and any projects they make will get a lot of publicity... doing this would asking to either be immediately shut down or the companies could even wait around a while, see how much money they rack up, and then sue to claim it all + damages.
It would also harm their options to get genuine licenses in the future because companies would see them as a liability that may be forced I to bankruptcy at any time with a innevitable "surprise" lawsuit hovvering over them all the time.
Very solid list, picked all my favourites. While the console/platform failed and was extremely short lived and expensive... back then even around the time of its demise with PSX and Saturn on the horizon, I would have still told you that it was worth buying for Road Rash and Need For Speed alone... if you had deep enough pockets.
And infact, I still stick to that. They are still the "best" versions of those games (subjective but easily arguable), and show how incredible and ahead of its time the system was. There's plenty of other fun games and impressive ports, but those 2 titles remain genuine "killer apps" for me that justify the purchase alone.
Otherwise known in the west as Sagaia... might be worth adding to the article? Because it was a pretty big seller for consoles under that name. The Master System version was fantastic, very impressive.
While its super cool to have, I'm not sure the ultra wide 3 screens combined will "read" very well on Switch in handheld mode, hopefully they include the single screen arcade board toggle as an option too. Looks like they did from the twitter thumbnails but I don't want to click onto that app, I'm avoiding getting sucked into social media doomscrolling! 😅
@XiaoShao Thank you! I agree with @no_donatello's summary of the Jag library, btw. For me, it's one of the weakest of that "mid" generation and the bad stuff is really embarrassingly bad, but there are some real gems too, and some fun to be had with the "quite good but not system sellers" portion of the library.
That whole section of gaming history is the most fascinating to me with the many failed systems all trying different things and having different strengths and weaknesses. On paper at least the Jaguar was one of the most exciting and capable bits of hardware. The main problem was it was extremely difficult to programme for, but included a motorola 68000 processor just intended as a backup for minor jobs supporting the more powerful chips... but as every dev team was familiar with that (basis of the Genesis, Amiga, ST, CPS1 etc!) they defaulted to using it, so this super powerful hardware just ended up with a lot of 16bit esque games that made the system look far weaker than it was. I don't think it's true power was ever really used.
If you haven't seen it, Game Sack on YT just did a fun "3dO vs Jaguar vs 32X" video which really shows the best of all 3 of those systems... even if as a Sega fan I'm salty about Joe's final conclusion! 😤 lol
You mentioned the CDi, and that's not in that video, principally I imagine because there aren't enough "real" games to have made it worthwhile talking about. For many years I thought there wasn't a game on the platform that I liked. But then I played "The Apprentice", which is excellent and I'd highly recommend. I'm always happy to find genuinely good games on these failed systems that were so ridiculously expensive and seemingly full of promise to my young mind but all failed and left the market before I could realistically afford them.
@no_donatello hahahah yes that's the one! I actually think if you take the time to learn to play it properly its not as terrible as people make out. And you only hear that sound effect if you crash into something.... which admittedly happens a LOT until you get used to it. Most people get so infuriated by that single soundbite they never put in the time to actually "learn to fly" 😂
@-wc- YES. I very nearly posted that exact thought! Then didn't incase it seemed snarky. But you did it for me so thank you! 😉 Yes its very weird. Its not like 3 is the universally accepted pinacle of the series or anything either. Its a good one, don't get me wrong, but.... still...
Marco and SV-001 were in the first game, and Eri debuted in the second... so why is this Metal Slug 3 specifically? Is there a zombie mode perhaps?
I see the giant crabs at the end of the trailer, maybe they wanted to use those specifically, and the license was cheaper if they specified only assets from one game rather than the whole series? It seems very weird if that's the case.
@no_donatello Wow that's really cool! Yes Blue Lightning was the pack-in game. IIRC it was made by a British programmer/studio, who also made Cybermorph, which was the pack-in for the Jag! I hope they were paid very well! Though even if not, they at least know they made the 2 games that literally everybody who owned the Jag and CD played, so that's pretty neat.
I remember Vid Grid too, it was released on PC-CD first... I think it was the first or one of the first games to use "Video for Windows", the codec Microsoft was pushing that would allow smooth fullscreen videos on Windows PCs. I remember it being covered quite heavily by some PC magazines at the time. A record label was attached to it so the music and music video clips were actual decent stuff instead of cheap licensed stock clips or public domain stuff like most "interactive media" shovelware of the time.
That Highlander game was very similar to Alone in the Dark in its presentation, from what I remember. I've never played it but I remember seeing previews of it and being interested because it was based on the animated series not the films, and I liked that show. I think it did get a full release, though I may be wrong. The Jag CD only got a handful of retail releases and many of the games I saw previews for were scrapped or moved to other consoles.
Its really cool that he's still got it and it still works! It must be one of a very small handful of units still functioning. I think possibly the reason the lasers tend to burn out very quickly is that the discs aren't stadard CD-roms but are formatted to hold more data, something like 800mb. This would mean the laser is working extra hard, but also there is less room for error correction. Put those two together and you have read errors a plenty as soon as the laser starts getting tired or if the output from the factory wasn't 100%. Your brother got very lucky!
This is amazing work! I'm especially impressed with how they made such clever use of PETSCii for the screen effects like the super moves, screen flashes, warps, colour flickers etc... very smart and super efficicent.
Of course a game with this amount of variety in sprites and backgrounds is only possible via cartridge for fast memory loading and swapping, and cartridge games ever really took off for C64 because tapes and discs were so much cheaper, but even still - had something of this quality been released back in the day, they would have sold like hotcakes!
@no_donatello Wow, really? Are you sure that it was a Jaguar and not another "failed" console of the era like the 3dO or CDi? Or your brother had a Jaguar but you experienced Myst on a something else your family owned like a PC/Mac/Playstation etc?
Its just that Myst was only on the Jaguar CD upgrade which is estimated to only have around 20k units sold to retaillers, and how many of them actually ended up in consumers hands is debatable... and the failure rate was extremely high so the handful of people who bought them often returned them. Add to the fact that barely any games were produced and barely any retailers sold them...
I'm not saying you're wrong, its perfectly possible your brother bought a Jag CD back in the day! Its just if so, you both had an extremely rare experience. I'm actually kinda jealous, I was excited reading about the system in magazines back in 93-94 and always wanted to own one, but never saw one in the wild.
As someone with over 2 decades in the entertainment industry producing all kinds of media and selling to many distributors and licensing to countless companies I completely understand that licenses are almost always temporary (limited by time windows), and often very specific in exactly what you can do with the product/brand you've licensed. Neither is the fault of Blaze/Evercade and I am sure they always try to get the best terms they possibly can.
But as someone who deeply cares about the history and preservation of old games and keeping them alive for new and returning audiences, its very frustrating that products such as the Evercade carts can't be for sale forever, just printing a new batch each time they sell out, if there is enough demand. At least putting up pre-orders for whatever the minimum amount required to make manufacturing a batch feasible would be a great workable solution (assuming you could get the licese terms in perpetuity... no mean feat.)
New physical copies of games are always welcome in my book, I feel the same about short print run companies like Limited Run, Super Rare et al, I understand its not possible for all products to always be available so even a temporary option with a small print run is significantly better than none at all. The Evercade carts fall into this same bracket, really. Collectors of them need to basically buy each new cartridges as they become available because you never know if they will still be around in the future, and if not, prices will probably significantly rise for the few in circulation, as per the market.
However, Atari is an interesting case. We all know that basically the company as it used to exist is no longer. Its just a brand/logo that is licensed out to pretty much anyone - hense why we have SO MANY new Atari devices, not to mention random seemingly unrelated products like "Atari" hotels and "Atari" cryptocurrencies/ERC tokens etc.
However, despite how easy it seems to be to pay your way into using the Atari brand to hawk your product, seemingly the Atari games were one of the most restrictive licenses of any of the companies/brands Evercade have worked with so far. The first two collections could only be played on the handheld devices because the license doesn't allow them to be played on home devices, like the Evercade VS. This doesn't apply to any other cartridge, as far as I know. And now we are seeing the licenses for these previous carts expiring in a pretty short time window.
I wonder how many other of the cartridges are on a similar time window (I'd wager many of them) and how long each window is? In a way, I think it would help transparency for the company, and wouldn't hurt them in any way - if they made this clear via their website when launching new products. It would actually presumably drive more people to buy the cartirdges right away, incase they can't in the future, or even increase sales numbers/speed as speculative purchases for when they go out of print, like the many people who buy Limited Run games assuming they will increase in value... (I'm not saying I approve of this practice, but it would make more money for Evercade, and they are a business afterall).
Of course, the only company that Evercade has worked with so far that is MORE restrictive than Atari has been Capcom... and Taito if you include those "non-Evercade" branded but none-the-less Evercade compatible handhelds with the built in games that Blaze is selling. However, as neither of these companies even allows the games to be put on cartridge, I strongly disapprove of them working with them at all... it goes against the unique selling point and stated ethos of the brand... but that is a rant I've already had on this site several times already! 😂
Johnny Marr d'en avoir marre. Aussi!
Bam ba da bam bam
[edit] Considering the pun, the Smiths music, and the retro gamer links of Alizée I was already pretty happy with my dad-joke XP boost from this post. But the fact this game is a text adventure means the Ascii is even more perfect than originally planned. Or maybe I'm a comedy genius. Yeah, I'mma go with that one. 😅
"Burger Becky" Heineman is a legend in programming circles. The fact that she managed to make 3dO Doom in the ridiculous circumstances she was given is a miracle.
In the late 70s, as a frustrated kid who couldn't afford games for her Atari 2600, she casually reverse engineered the entire system so that she could both create her own games, and make affordable pirate copies of existing ones.
In addition to this, she was the first person to win a National Videogames competition way back in 1980, becoming the Space Invaders champion. This got her a lot of fame and was hired to work on the book "How to Master Video Games". When she explained that she had literally reverse engineered the code of Space Invaders to work out how to be the best player, she was hired on the spot to start actually developing games... her CV from 1983-present day is insane.
@TwistC I concur, dope mask! I echo the suggestion to mount it like a deer head. Maybe frame the certificate too and hang it nearby.
The app was attrocious and an insult to the limited selection of games available on there. Real missed opportunity as with actually good emulation and covering some systems and arcade titles other than only Genesis ones could have made it something special. No advertising plus good emulation and growing selection of Sega titles over the gamut of systems (even just Master System, Mega CD, 32X and some Sega 16 arcade titles if the newer stuff was too hard/demanding) and I'd have happily paid a subscription. As it was though, it actively left a sour taste in the mouth of many fans, from what reactions I saw. Wasted opportunity kinda thing.
However the twitter account and social media stuff shifted into a really nice direction promoting their history and showcasing some really cool stuff. It will be a shame if they don't continue with it or something similar, Sega have such a rich history to dig through and I love that there are people on their staff who know and care about this stuff. The recent video of the restoration of the Trocadéro Sega World Sonic statue was truly heart warming. I can't wait to take a picture with him next time I'm at their offices.
[edit] In all seriousness though, MVG is a good dude I've got a lot of time for him. I love that when he unearths stuff like this he always archives everything and makes it public rather than selling to a collector that may sit on it and never dump/release it.
The kind of collectors who'll pay $5K for a boxed copy of this game aren't doing it to play it, its for one of two reasons: Speculation that it will increase in value, or because they are an actual gamer who feel attached to owning something infamous with unique story behind its history.
The "story" of why this game is rare is what that makes it so expensive in the first place. Most games with a similarly short print run don't reach this level of value. Of course, this game was Blockbuster exclusive - probably the most famous example of a Blockbuster exclusive, because people who were around in the early 90s remember the big advertising campaign around the original Clayfighter, so there is some franchise/novelty appeal to this one.
So, some people have nostalgia for the series, and MANY more have nostalgia for Blockbuster specifically. I can very easily see that if you're willing to pay $5k for the game, predominantly for this story and link to Blockbuster, then a blockbuster receipt to go with the game makes it a lot more appealing. $300 to be able to enhance that story seems a bargain by comparison.
Of course... I personally think they are insane 😂 But each to their own. I think the most I've ever paid for a videogame is around £500, but that was years ago when I was a bit more flush. (Film industry is NOT what it was pre-pandemic!) Many would say even that's far too much. I understand those who think $70 is too high for a game. Nowadays I wouldn't pay £500 that much for a single game, no matter how rare. I really want a physical copy of Shantae and the Pirate's Curse for Switch but I'm not comfortable paying the kind of money it goes for.
However, I do understand the value of having a game tied to a retailer you are nostalgic for. I've paid very slightly extra for games on ebay if they come with price stickers from Woolworths, Toys R Us or Dixons, as these were the places I bought games from most often as a kid. If they come with a reciept, I get a kick out of being able to see the original price, date and location and imagine buying it back then. I certainly don't throw receipts away when I find them inside games - there's something neat about feeling attached to the history of the item. Not $300 worth of neat, but that's just me.
Myst was indeed a very big deal at the time. Interestingly it was a game that many parents of my friends played, even though none of them were "gamers" - it was seen as more like intellectual interactive entertainment rather than a "game for kids"...
Though I feel even that trailer is misleading of what the actual game was like. It was mostly a slideshow where you clicked on elements to move to the next slide. Obviously different genres, but comparable because of the same launch year - for me at the time, Doom felt 10 generations ahead of this, because you could actually move around a 3d environment in real time. First time I'd ever seen that pulled off actually convincingly and at a good framerate.
Assuming this is a Windows device like its bigger brother, rather than Android like the pocket version, this could be the first such device to actually convince me to make the jump. Configuring the multitude of emulators and software that I'd want on this type of device with an onscreen keyboard (or even fiddling with attaching an external one each time I want to tweak something) sounds like a nightmare and if a device tlike this could also replace my need for a laptop when going on small trips or doing business in coffee shops etc, I'm sold.
This game looks really nice, on my radar for sure. I know just how hard making an impressive GB title can be, there's some deceptively impressive work going on here to juggle everything.
@TransmitHim Good spot, that's concerning... like literally the cash is going towards developing the game, but doesn't buy you a copy and you'll have to pay again?
I'm toying with making NES and GB games with my mascot Hazel, as side projects to her main game. Just hobbyist tinkering for now. If I ever did a kickstarter, it would 100% be to fund the physical carts (and also make a small profit of course, I'm not saying devs shouldn't pay themselves!)
Considering with all my games I'll be including not only a nice box but manual, map, poster etc (I love designing that kind of stuff) I imagine a cart only option would be quite a bit cheaper. One thing I hadn't considered at all is that some people might want a cart only option, but it makes sense that many people collect both GB and NES as cart only... thanks for putting that on my radar, I'll definitely do that for those that want it.
On brief glances I always liked that logo/banner art - but I just realised the Saturn pad is mirrored, and its plugged into the wrong port. Looks like the artist mirrored the refererence image, corrected the logos in photoshop, but didn't think to correct the pad, not realising it wasn't a symetrical layout. But even that wouldn't explain why its plugged into the wrong port, so they must have used 2 reference images.
Upon checking, all the console and pad images match up with the Evan Amos photos from Wikimedia commons including the separated Saturn & Mk2 US / J-S pad. The TV is a Mini Star / Tele Star which are the most common models to come up when you search for stock images of portable crt tvs.
The fact they made those 2 really obvious mistakes makes me feel like they chose an artist who has no familiarity with the console or even retro controls whatsoever, who just looked up free stock images, made a photoshop collage, then traced over it... or even more likely (as specifically pixel artists presumably are well aquainted with retro consoles) used and AI pixel art filter, of which there are several that work very well and give results akin to this.
That makes me sad. And the fact this is the main promotional image for their tribute to their history is doubly sad.
WonderDog on the cart, manual and box! You love to see it!
I always prefered the MultiMega (CD-X) to the WonderMega (X-Eye), as to me it looked like a high end portable CD player. But all obscure Sega hardware is cool with me! I hadn't realised til relatively recently there were 2 quite different looking hardware models of the WonderMega, I have the first but not the second. Need to fix that.
I included the console logos for these and similar hardware variants / Sega compatibles as easter eggs in the attract mode for my Sonic compilation. They appear if you let it play a second time through. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvTiAmOH8MM
@RetroGames Well, it was predominantly a system designed around a keyboard and mouse, in the early 80s where single button Atari style joysticks were the norm.
There were a huge variety of more console/arcade like experiences, many of them excellent and the hardware easily kept up with the Megadrive and SNES, sometimes surpassing what they oculd do... but that darn single button joystick really held them back. This often meant "up to jump" in platformers, and ruined 1v1 fighting games, arguably the 2 most popular genres of the early 90s.
The "up to jump" thing is nowadays entirely fixed by emulation, or even joysticks for real hardware that include a second button that doubles as "up" such as the solutions from Monster joysticks - hashtag not sponsored. [edit] And yes, I know Amiga could technically support more than one button on controllers, adn some games utilise it. Its just that most people didn't have controllers to support that, so devs didn't tend to include the option or design around it.
Could easily add to the list but this does a great job at giving a wide overview of genres and every game here is a certified banger.
Worth pointing out that while the 500 was obviously the best selling model, I'd hazard a guess that almost all of them were upgraded to 1mb making them 500 Plus in all but name and case badge. Growing up, it seemed more of my friends owned 600 and 1200 but that's probably just because of our exact age and the models that were being pushed at the time. People with older siblings often had a 500. All 3 of those systems are wonderful.
Comments 181
Re: SNES Classic Top Racer / Top Gear Is Being Turned Into A Tabletop Mini Arcade
That's pretty awesome! The Top Gear games are great. Personally, I would have preferred an actual mini arcade cab in the style of the upright versions of Outrun, Chase HQ etc, rather than in the style of a Colleco tabletop, but for those that collect them or have nostalgia for them this is really neat.
@farrgazer I had one of those! I've seen a few videos where people have modded them with a Rasberry Pi and a real screen to play racing games. So cool!
Re: The Making Of: Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - GameCube's Horror Classic
@-wc- Just so you know, you're replying to comments from 2015, before the Switch was even a glint in papa Miyamoto's eye. Many of the comments you see are from people who dont even use this site.
This keeps confusing me as well, it's very easy to miss. It happens because they are slowly migrating old retro content from Nintendolife, PushSquare and Pure Xbox to this site instead... and when they do, the old comments come across, but it appears in the feed as if it's a brand new post. 😅
I keep being conflicted because some of these dredged up old articles are things that I want to chat about, but never know if people will bother commenting or if they ignore the old reposts, or would think it's weird to comment on an old article.
In any case, I really like Eternal Darkness, and would 100% buy a Switch version, even if just a simple up-res like Pikmim 1&2.
Re: "Like A Book Or A Movie" - Star Fox Dev Dylan Cuthbert Shares His Vision Of Retro Gaming's Future
@Damo I appreciate the response man, thanks. I appreciate (and tried to make clear, apologies if I didn't) that the angle of the stories was different, just the core subject. It's the fact they appear at the same rough time frame that causes the confusion, or even apathy... as I said, often I refrain from commenting on an article that I usually would have, because I don't want to comment on both one after another anf have 2 articles to check back on and read responses to etc.
I don't think it's just me that has that reaction. As I said, I often see articles here with zero or very few comments, where the corresponding article from the same day on NL (or PS/PXB) has lots of comments. That unnecessarily harms this site, because it will lower SEO and also look like less people are interested in the articles for people (or advertisers!) clicking on them. I don't want that to happen, as I really love this site and want it to grow 😀
Perhaps a simple solution is to just gently stagger articles with a same core subject a day apart, and make it more like a series ("check our sister site Time Extension for more on Dylan Cuthbert tomorrow"! Etc then just add the link the day after). I certainly know that by the next day I'd be more inclined to post again, as would many, as evidenced by the big amount of posts under multiple Sonic posts in the same week, for example.
I'm aware part of the point in this site especially is for many of the articles to be evergreen historical content, but the day you first post is important because the vast majority of comments and interactivity come the days it's posted as it's at the top of the feed, and early performance of a blog article is very much taken into account by Google algorithm for recommending the site to external users.
Anyway, just some unsolicited advice that you can of course freely ignore! 😂 but it comes from a place of wanting this site to succeed and grow. Your involvement specifically makes this a (the?) natural successor to the classic magazines that we all grew up reading in the 90s and respects and covers the period so well. That's why I stick around 😊
Re: Kelsey Lewin Is Leaving The Video Game History Foundation
@-wc- I feel that with all art/media the creators or original owners (ie those who either funded its creation, or purchased it from those original creators for distribution rights) should be able to sell and profit from it for as long as they want to, until the copyright expires.
However, in all cases (games, music, movies) once the original artist/owner no longer wants to sell them, or the rights are basically untraceable and unprovable, they should immediately become free to distribute. Doesn't have to be public domain, there are Creative Commons attributions where they are free to share as long as you don't sell them. Similar to what people label as "Abandonware" though the majority if that is no more legal than distributing roms.
To be clear, I personally support downloading and sharing of roms, old cracked games etc, as long as they are not available to purchase anywhere, I see no moral issue, regardless of legality. As an artist myself, I'm aware that once you release something commercially for a wide audience, it is no longer just yours, it becomes part of people's story of their lives. To suddenly remove access to it seems wrong to me.
In other words, if old games companies keep wanting to sell copies of their games from the 80s and 90s to new generations, I think that's good, and it's their right. However, if they don't have any intention of allowing people to access them through legal means, they should allow others to share them for free. And crucially, others who had nothing to do with funding or creating them in the first place should not be allowed to claim ownership, for reasons I'll cover below.
I'm aware that's all a massive over simplification and there's plenty of exceptions and whataboutisms but I feel thats a broad sensible starting point for the way forward. I agree with your sentiment (if I understood it) that having games for sale shouldn't be the priority. For me, the priority should be accessibility, and the copyright holders can choose if they want to profit, or waive their rights and give their old work to the fans 😀
There's an enormous unspoken sickness in the retrogames community with opportunistic leaches "buying the rights" to games, characters, hardware or company names/logos that they had nothing to do with creating, often for literal pocket change (£1-10 each!!!)... then cynically releasing hugely overpriced and poorly put together compilations, hardware etc to make money from the nostalgia of retro collectors.
Even worse, some of the biggest offenders even use their new found "ownership" to make copyright claims on YouTube videos, retrogame books, articles, blogs, documentaries... claiming tens of thousands in revenue from clicks through DMCA claims that Youtube/Google just grant without question. Spend £10, threaten lawsuits, YouTube transfers you thousands. Rinse and repeat. Even worse again, some of these individuals running this scam DON'T even have the technical legal ownership rights they claim to... they just grift that they do and rely on people not bothering or being able to afford to force them to actually prove it.
Its a sickness and I hate the abuse of our collective memories. It's ruined the lives of friends of mine. I've been harassed myself. Thankfully, I have entertainment lawyers backed by the huge companies I work with to help me out on the occasions I'm targeted. But many aren't as lucky and simply can't defend themselves against this fraud.
Sadly, pushing the selling old long forgotten retrogames, rather than legal free distribution, encourages and validates this behaviour. Of course companies that are still in business like Nintendo, Sega, Capcom, Konami et al should capitalise from their old catalogues. But companies that haven't existed for 30 years cannot possibly accept royalties, so these vultures sweep in and take over. In my opinion, the law is outdated, and being able to claim ownership of art that you didn't either create or fund simply shouldn't be possible. But I'm an artist who has lost control over a lot of my work over the years, so I'll always side with the artists over unrestrained profit above morals style extreme capitalism.
Re: Kelsey Lewin Is Leaving The Video Game History Foundation
Kelsey is someone I admire a great deal and is consistently a great voice in the community. We dont really have any context here as to why she made this decision, I hope its just simply a case of "too many projects, too busy to give enough time to this thing I care about to do it justice" rather than anything more sinister. I wish her nothing but the best and will continue to enjoy her content and insights elsewhere.
Re: "Like A Book Or A Movie" - Star Fox Dev Dylan Cuthbert Shares His Vision Of Retro Gaming's Future
This was a great read, thank you! I 100% agree that rather than an endless stream of remasters/remakes of cherry picked obvious titles, making all/most old games still available to new audiences would be a better priority. Of course, the movie industry constantly re-releases big titles either as extended/directors cuts, 4k remasters etc too, but you can also easily get access to most notable movies from decades ago through a variety of options. Videogames haven't managed that second part yet.
However, I nearly didnt comment on this article... not to rant, but I literally just wrote a comment about Dylan Cuthbert and Star Fox under the article on Nintendolife. It keeps happening recently that different articles but about the same core subject are posted on both sites at once... I can't speak for others but I find this a little annoying, and also confusing. I nearly didn't click and read the article as I thought it was the same one. And in all other cases where this has happened, I've not commented on an article I usually would have done, because I don't want to double up or split my thoughts between both. I reckon others feel the same way as I've noticed in those occasions, the NL article will get lots of comments and the TE one get zero, when it usually would have been popular. That can't be good for engagement based SEO.
I don't mean to complain, I love these sites. That's why I take time to make (hopefully thoughtful and interesting to some) comments. I'm offering constructive criticism on a point I haven't seen anyone else raise. Keep up the good work everyone 😇
Re: Best Music Videos Featuring Video Games
@ludotaku Oh, that's really cool, thank you for posting that! I've been really trying to improve my ability to listen and understand French (my vocabulary is decent and I can read and write it at a reasonable level, and my pronunciation is apparantly good, but have a lot of difficulty understanding people speaking in real time).
I practice hard every day with various apps and I spend a lot of time listening to random French music and trying to understand the lyrics, and also watching kids TV shows in French (currently enjoying "D'Artagnan et les Trois Mousquetaires", great because I'm familiar with the English language version, and fitting because its based on French history and the Dumas books), and interviews with celebrities where I know a little about them or their projects (currently disecting old interviews with Alizée!) so I have a headstart and can fill in the blanks of what I don't catch.
I recently moved to France but right next to Disneyland and everybody in the vacinity is fluent in English. If you try and speak french to them to practice, they'll literally turn around and say "you're French is really good! Well done!" and then continue the conversation in English rather than try to understand your slow/broken French. I should put up a poster looking for a French friend who'll actually put up with my bad French so I can slowly make it less bad!
I really like that song! Very helpful for me that its slow and there is a pause between each line for me to process what was just said. Right away I recognised and understood the gimmick of the alphabet at the end of each line, and felt quite proud that I caught quite a few of the puns first time, like Pinocchi... O and BM... W, and "to break up with you, a letter isn't good enough, I need the whole alphabet". Really cool. Thats going in my rotation of songs to listen to and try and fully learn.
Re: Best Music Videos Featuring Video Games
Also, let's not forget that ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER went through a phase of making Techno for the UK charts featuring Nintendo music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_O35BDdtWY&ab_channel=ohnoitisnathan17
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2nF92mu8X0&ab_channel=RachRoyston
Yes. The old dude who made west end musicals. Guess he had a midlife crisis and overdosed on Gameboy and 2 Unlimited?
This will never not be funny to me:
The fact that "Super Mario Land" in the music video is represented by a dreary grey skied day in the car park of Chessington World of Adventures is too perfect, its like it was satire. 😂
Re: Best Music Videos Featuring Video Games
Does an idiot promoting a mini console count? 😅
Some people in these parts know that I used to ghost write for a lot of famous rappers before moving into the film industry. When working on the film Brotherhood, I met Stormzy, who discovered this past and encouraged me to make a song to promote the film.
It was a laugh, bit embarassing, but I didn't take it too seriously. The original VEVO upload got 1.2 million views! 🤯 But I took it down because of unfortunate revelations about some people involved with the film, so I no longer felt comfortable profiting from promoting it.
Anyway - I put many videogame sound effects into the instrumental, from Mario, Sonic, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat... a lot of very geeky references and wordplay, 80s and 90s references... in the VEVO thumbnail I was wearing a Saved by the Bell Kelly Kapowski shirt! 😍
Around the 3 minute mark I say "I'm ahead of the game, I've got a PS6!" and hold up a NES classic mini. The record label got it as a promotional item before the system was even released, and by the time the music video was out they were rare as hems teeth, so I thought it was a funny thing to flex, alongside the other more traditionally "cool" sponsored items like Beats headphones & Pill etc.
An unlisted video is viewable here for anyone that wants to cringe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlExpIBMhFo&ab_channel=SamuelVictorMusic
Re: The Making Of: Turok: Dinosaur Hunter - The N64's Other Must-Have FPS
I get so confused when old NintendoLife articles get moved to this website, with the old comments intact. I thought we'd seen the return of several old online friends I haven't spoken to in years! 😂
As for Turok 1, as a launch day N64 owner and a dinosaur fanatic, it was a game that I was really hyped for when reading previews in magazines. But when eventually playing a rental copy, I found the fog made it near unplayable for me, sadly, and much of the time it felt like my new alledgedly superpowered console was being used to render an almost entirely white screen.
The sequels fared a bit better with me. However, that NightDive remaster finally allowed me to play and enjoy the game I'd been hyped for 20+ years before. There was always a good game underneath the technical limitations.
Re: Could MiSTer Rival MARS FPGA Be The New King Of Retro Gaming?
There's a lot of brand new accounts registering today just to argue in this thread 🤔
Re: Random: Music Fans Are Modding Early PS1 Consoles To Use As CD Players
@Poodlestargenerica In general, all Sony hardware I've ever encountered has been of exemplary quality, high fi, walkmen, tvs, phones, dslr and mirrorless, pro cinema video cameras. At least the first models of every PlayStation.
That was why I was so shocked and angry at the PlayStation Classic mini, something that should have been an easy home run. I couldn't believe they messed it up so badly 😅
Re: Random: Music Fans Are Modding Early PS1 Consoles To Use As CD Players
My slightly older "cool" friend who considered himself an audiosnob was using his launch day 1001 as a CD player through a very fancy amp & expensive custom built speakers back in 1995. It sounded amazing! Many nights as a teen getting h*** round his and listening to music waaaay too loud and getting complaints from the neighbours.
As a Saturn and N64 guy, when I finally broke down and bought a PlayStation of my own around 1998 when they were reduced to £100 and there were too many exclusives that I wanted, I was most annoyed that they cheaped out and removed the audio jacks.
Re: Hands On: Evercade's Latest Crop Of Carts Offer Some Welcome Surprises
@mjparker77 Thanks for the response, I didnt know they'd officially said that. I guess that makes sense. But it's easy to remap buttons in an emulator...
Perhaps the Megadrive port separated certain functions to different buttons whereas the Amiga version expected more complex combinations to get around the single button joysticks that were mostly standard? I honestly dont remember. Surely it can't be as simple as "we wanted to get rid of 'up to jump' as that's an easy fix.
I never had any problems with the Amiga controls feeling overly conveluted... I'm intregued now, I'll have to boot up them both in emulators and see!
Re: Best 3DO Games Of All Time
@UK_Kev I knew the price decreased, but I hadn't made the same connection that the $300 price point was the same as the PlayStation launch price, and cheaper than the Saturn. Frankly, for me at the time, all of them seemed to be impossible price's I'd never be able to afford! That's fascinating that both Panasonic and Goldstar slashed the prices that much, that must have been to clear stock and was a sign of a death spiral, even though it in theory increased the user base of potential customers for games, I can't see many devs wanting to risk making new games for a console that was essentially discontinued. I saw the same thing happen with shops selling brand new 32X for £20 and amazing Dreamcast bundles with several good games fir £50.
I'm exactly the same as you in that I read and enjoyed all the magazines at the time, and was really interested and excited in all the "next generation" hardware and amazing CD, 32bit and 3D technologies and the potential they had. At the time, I had only just upgraded to 16bit consoles and was mostly buying second hand games for them. So things like the 3do, Jaguar, Cdi, 32X/CD and eventual PSX, Saturn, Ultra 64 all seemed like pipedreams of unimaginable sci-fi powers! Seeing the majority of them come and go, failing almost immediately because the new latest greatest was on the horizon was a real trip!
The upshot of all the failures was a year or two later I could actually afford all the "unafforable" systems, as no-one wanted them and were practically giving them away. I had fun exploring them all while I waited for PlayStation & Saturn to enter my price range. I've got a lot of live for the more obscure consoles and upgrades from that time period 😀
Re: Could MiSTer Rival MARS FPGA Be The New King Of Retro Gaming?
@Blast16 Yeah this is where I'm at with FPGA systems... Once everything from 8bit through 128bit are possible to be perfectly replicated, I'll jump on board, even if the price is that of a gaming PC. My reluctance to jump on the Mistr train is that systems like Saturn and DC can't run on it, and frankly, emulation of 8 and 16bit systems and computers is "good enough" to the point of basically perfect for what I want if you have a good enough pc... which I do, and that can also run the much newer systems, and of course modern games etc.
The various 32/64/"128" bit consoles are more spotty in their accuracy for PC, and getting the individual best options set up and running is a mission in itself. If we get to the point where an all in one box I can plug into my TV will meet the FPGA "promise" of being a 1:1 hardware recreation and therefore just run everything perfectly first time no questions... I'll be a very happy camper no matter what the cost.
Like you, my ideal is up to Dreamcast, PS2, GC and OG Xbox... but I'd settle for just DC, as long as the Saturn support is good. An all in one Sega box is the dream.
Re: Best 3DO Games Of All Time
@UK_Kev Just wanted to say that your perspective on the quick and sudden death of the 3do is bang on. At the time, I remember thinking it was the most likely to succeed out of all the "interim" systems while all the others were dying, and it was growing the biggest and most respectible library... I was very aware of the M2 hype as well, to me it felt like the company/brand was around to stay. And then it seemingly disappeared overnight.
My theory was always that the console was simply too expensive, and once the PlayStation was released for cheaper, and being obviously better and with more quality third party support, that was the begining of the end. But I was still surprised by the fast decline, I figured it would be more a case of either a slow decline, or a "hail mary" price decrease and actually competing. Of course, nowadays I realise that wasn't possible, because the nature of 3do consoles being concieved as more of a "standard" for many companies to make compatible systems for meant they couldn't sell at a loss hoping to make a profit back on games.
But reading your posts, you are 100% right. It was the best selling, had the biggest and best library... BUT the biggest titles were ported to PSX, Saturn and PC meaning there was less reason to buy, and pushing the M2 so hard meant no-one new would buy the console, instead they'd wait... and just like that, in a 2-3 month window they went from a promising rising success to dead in the water because the competition was just too strong, could afford to sell at a loss, and poached all the biggest exclusives... no-one would have bought a 3do for Christmas that year, and PSX absolutely cleaned up, Saturn taking second place and 3do a very, very distant 3rd. Amazing how an entire supposed future proof "industry standard" can tank so quickly after a promising start and steady growth.
Thanks for the insight. As ever, I really enjoy reading your posts. Always knowledgeable and far better at being succinct than I am! 😂
Re: Hands On: Evercade's Latest Crop Of Carts Offer Some Welcome Surprises
@Krambo42 Oh absolutely the Amiga was barely a blip in the States this is mostly a European and especially British phenomena. Out of all the "Famous Amiga games" that were ported to the consoles, Flashback and Another World / Out of this World are the ones that saw most success on consoles, but still nowhere near the same attach rate per unit.
You'd be hard pushed to find a British Amiga owner who didn't have a copy of Flashback to show off the fancy intro graphics and rotoscoped sprites to their console owning friends. It was one of the most common games and piracy / copying friends' games and sharing was commonplace so basically there were like 20 Amiga games that literally everybody who owned an Amiga played, because they knew someone who had a copy, then made their own copy, shared it around etc.
Btw you're right that it was originally planned for Genesis/Megadrive release but then that was delayed for whatever reason (discs are far less financial risk than carts too!) and the Amiga version came out much earlier. Both machines had the same cpu and similar specs so it's quite easy to port between. The Amiga versions often have better music, and sometimes graphics are more colourful or more varied due to certain advantages. Genesis exclusive games are another story of course as they are able to be optimised for its strengths, but the Amiga ports are nearly always slightly worse.
I'd be interested to know how many other of the "famous" Amiga games that got less successful console ports you encountered in America? Ones that spring to mind are Speedball 2, Xenon 2, Sensible Soccer, Cannon Fodder, Gods, Puggsy, Zool, Syndicate, Chaos Engine, A-Train, Mega Lo Mania, James Pond, Shadow of the Beast, Jaguar XJ220, Fantastic Dizzy (or any Dizzy game for NES!), Chuck Rock, Bubba n Stix, Wolfchild, Sink or Swim.... I'm sure there's many more that others could point out. But certainly all of those titles were very well known on Amiga but wouldn't even break the top 100 sales on any of the consoles they were ported to.
Only other "Amiga first" games I can think of that had true success on consoles were Lemmings and Worms. Maybe Theme Park, but I think that's more associated with PC than Amiga.
Re: Hands On: Evercade's Latest Crop Of Carts Offer Some Welcome Surprises
@Krambo42 Don't get me wrong, I'm predominantly a console gamer and collector, far more so than Amiga or any other home computer.
It's just that certain titles were first available on Amiga, huge hits that defined the system and almost every owner played... and then a handful of the biggest of these games got console ports that were usually at least slightly watered down, and didn't sell very well because it was a different market with different competition.
So when people think of those games, they automatically think of the Amiga original and many aren't even aware that there was a console version, as they usually sold so poorly and we're overshadowed in marketing my the console exclusives. Something like Zool was huge on Amiga precisely because Amiga didn't have Sonic or Mario. Releasing it on the consoles was a bad idea, and the ports were half baked at best.
There has been quite a few games released on Evercade that were "system defining" big hitters for Amiga. Naturally the people gravitating towards buying the cartridges with these games were mostly Amiga fans. But then the games weren't the same as they remembered. Part of the confusion is that Evercade don't state which system the specific versions games they are selling are from.
There was similar confusion with people buying a collection of Dizzy games, and getting a bunch of mostly unreleased & unlicensed NES/Aladdin ports, when the majority of Dizzy fans were Spectrum/Commodore/CPC fans in the UK where the NES barely made a blip. Personally I think it's a wonderful collection, but I saw many people annoyed or confused. Same with the "Amiga" titles which ended up being Megadrive or NES versions. I saw particular anger in comments sections at people feeling swindled by Speedball 2, Xenon 2, Sensible Soccer, Canon Fodder, all being waterered down versions. Zool having entirely different levels confused the heck out of people.
When it comes to Flashback specifically, I think it ported pretty well to most consoles, though the SNES's cpu clearly couldn't handle the cutscenes. From what I remember, the Genesis version is fine. But it's not the original version the majority of fans of that game would have played. And being that they've now clearly managed to get an Amiga emulator working on Evercade, finally, it seems weird to still go with the console port. I wondered if I'm missing something, like if it's actually better in some way?
Re: Hands On: Evercade's Latest Crop Of Carts Offer Some Welcome Surprises
@mjparker77 @Krambo42 Yes, that's very strange... while I rejoice that finally we are getting Amiga versions of games on Evercade (having previously been saddled with console ports of famous Amiga games like Speedball 2 etc) I hoped this signalled that we were going to get the Amiga version of games predominantly made famous on that system now moving forward. Do we know the reason why they went with Megadrive/Genesis version of Flashback? Is it better in some way?
Re: Hands On: Evercade's Latest Crop Of Carts Offer Some Welcome Surprises
I could write a huuuuge long post (even bigger than my usual rants!) about these cartridges, covering my feelings on them all because I think all 4 are good collections and very worth owning.
However, I'll single out Sydney Hunter, because, as Damo put it: "perhaps the one that will be the hardest sell for most Evercade owners". I agree that its the one less likely to fly off the shelves. But I'm here to say that's a mistake.
These are really good games made by a talented and passionate team for numerous systems, through Intellivision through 8 & 16bits to a modern Steam release. This collection includes the Shrines of Peril for the Intellivision, The Sacred Tribe for the Master System, Jester for the NES, and Caverns of Death for the SNES. It even comes with a separate poster and a full map included on the back for the Master System title which is somewhat Metroidvania-esque, so having a physical map is really cool and reminds me of old times.
Getting 4 on one cart rather than having to seek out each individual original limited edition carts (which I thinkare all sold out now so its a reaseller/ebay thing!) saves money and time and makes them more accessible. Its a shame Mayan Adventure isn't on there too, I'd recomend checking that one out on Steam / Switch.
They are really nice games and if anything, while they may not have the nostalgia factor to play on, high quality retro-style games could be seen as more exciting than ones you already know and love, because its like travelling back in time and getting a new game from the store as a kid. (Though I'm biased, as a dev of various retro-style games!)
Again, all four of these carts have good games and are great value, but if I had to recomend a single one? I highly recomend giving the Sydney Hunter titles a try. Don't sleep on it.
Re: Taito's 1989 Shoot 'Em Up Darius II Is This Week's Arcade Archives Release
@KingMike Hmmm, interesting, I've never directly compared the two! Mostly played various home versions of Sagaia and only played the arcade version a couple of times when seeing it in the wild over the years. Little changes between versions always intregue me, so I'll have to look into it. Thanks for that!
Re: Best 3DO Games Of All Time
@XiaoShao "good" is subjective... it was more of an "interactive multimedia experience" than a true game. Fairly rudimentary point and click adventure with puzzles, and arcades mini games that are akin to what would eventually be early 2000s flash games.
However, the FMV, sound and music were excellent for the time and far more impressive than similar titles on Mega CD, CDi (without the optional videocard at least) etc. And the minigames, while simple, had pretty amazing graphics that wouldn't have been possible on the 16bits. In short clips on a commercial, they would have made it look like an incredible game! Watching longer clips of full gameplay would have instantly broken that illusion though! The 8 & 16 bit JP games were all significantly better to actually play.
So, is it worth playing today? Not really, other than as a historical curiosity. But at the time it would have been a technical showpiece that showed the potential of "interactive entertainment"... which was what was being used as a way to sell expensive hardware to parents as if it was educational and "not just a videogame". Sadly for kids whose parents bought into this idea, often the truth was "barely a videogame at all" !
Some people love these type of early 90s entertainment CD rom "experiences". I guess they are an acquired taste, like the "laser disc games" like Space Ace and Dragons Lair... which also had great ports for the 3dO. For people who like them, I guess the JP one is one of the best. The Mega CD title has worse graphics but is probably the better designed point and click adventure.
Re: Best 3DO Games Of All Time
@Poodlestargenerica Yeah there's Alone in the Dark 1 and 2 on 3do. Also really good version of Flashback in addition to Out of this World.
It's difficult to quantify "other consoles of its time"... the 3dO was part of that awkward phase where Genesis, SNES, Amiga and DOS ruled the roost, but before the PlayStation, Saturn, N64, PCs with 3D accelerators...
Really the systems it should be compared to are Mega Cd, 32X, CDi, CD32, Jaguar, Jaguar CD, NeoGeo Cd, Pippin, PCFX, Virtual Boy, CDTV, and a few more that probably slip my mind right now. There seemed a never ending list of new systems trying to establish what the "next generation" would be like, but they were all about 3 years early to really get an impressive leap forward but at an afforable price.
While my personal allegiance was to stick with the Megadrive and add a Mega CD and 32X (really nice combined library if you can sift through the trash) I think it's arguable that the 3dO was the closest of all the systems of its ilk to give a vision of what was to come with the PlayStation. Trouble is, it wasn't quite as powerful, and was far to expensive. But for those with deep pockets, it was a taste of the future at least 18 months early.
Difficult to appreciate the novelty factor when looking back... but easy to understand how that lucky few that had one around launch were mind blown enough to still sing its praises decades on... a bit like how Dreamcast owners got to experience PS2/GC/Xbox quality games 28 months early, and felt gyped when it died.
Re: Metal Slug 3 Teams Up With "Competitive RTS" Warpath
@Damo Yeah that was my guess too. That's not something I've ever come across when doing IP deals before. Very unusual if so, especially for a retro property.
Obviously specific current IP like the latest movie in a franchise is different, of course... but thats paying EXTRA for the latest logos/art etc to ride off the success of the big marketing campaigns for the movie... so the exact opposite of our theory here.
Re: Nightdive CEO Pitches Potential Way To Remaster More Classic Titles
Yeah it's a legal minefield. Asking for "donations" but using the IPs of others is opening yourself to lawsuits left right and centre. Even some individuals with virtually no profile earning peanuts get slapped with C&D for this kind of stuff all the time, you may get away with it for a while but it's a ticking timebomb.
In the case of Nightdive, they are an actual company with employees who are paid wages, they are well known and any projects they make will get a lot of publicity... doing this would asking to either be immediately shut down or the companies could even wait around a while, see how much money they rack up, and then sue to claim it all + damages.
It would also harm their options to get genuine licenses in the future because companies would see them as a liability that may be forced I to bankruptcy at any time with a innevitable "surprise" lawsuit hovvering over them all the time.
Re: Best 3DO Games Of All Time
Very solid list, picked all my favourites. While the console/platform failed and was extremely short lived and expensive... back then even around the time of its demise with PSX and Saturn on the horizon, I would have still told you that it was worth buying for Road Rash and Need For Speed alone... if you had deep enough pockets.
And infact, I still stick to that. They are still the "best" versions of those games (subjective but easily arguable), and show how incredible and ahead of its time the system was. There's plenty of other fun games and impressive ports, but those 2 titles remain genuine "killer apps" for me that justify the purchase alone.
Re: Taito's 1989 Shoot 'Em Up Darius II Is This Week's Arcade Archives Release
"I always wanted a thing called tuna sasimi!"
Otherwise known in the west as Sagaia... might be worth adding to the article? Because it was a pretty big seller for consoles under that name. The Master System version was fantastic, very impressive.
While its super cool to have, I'm not sure the ultra wide 3 screens combined will "read" very well on Switch in handheld mode, hopefully they include the single screen arcade board toggle as an option too. Looks like they did from the twitter thumbnails but I don't want to click onto that app, I'm avoiding getting sucked into social media doomscrolling! 😅
Re: Evercade's Atari Carts Are Being Discontinued
@XiaoShao Thank you! I agree with @no_donatello's summary of the Jag library, btw. For me, it's one of the weakest of that "mid" generation and the bad stuff is really embarrassingly bad, but there are some real gems too, and some fun to be had with the "quite good but not system sellers" portion of the library.
That whole section of gaming history is the most fascinating to me with the many failed systems all trying different things and having different strengths and weaknesses. On paper at least the Jaguar was one of the most exciting and capable bits of hardware. The main problem was it was extremely difficult to programme for, but included a motorola 68000 processor just intended as a backup for minor jobs supporting the more powerful chips... but as every dev team was familiar with that (basis of the Genesis, Amiga, ST, CPS1 etc!) they defaulted to using it, so this super powerful hardware just ended up with a lot of 16bit esque games that made the system look far weaker than it was. I don't think it's true power was ever really used.
If you haven't seen it, Game Sack on YT just did a fun "3dO vs Jaguar vs 32X" video which really shows the best of all 3 of those systems... even if as a Sega fan I'm salty about Joe's final conclusion! 😤 lol
You mentioned the CDi, and that's not in that video, principally I imagine because there aren't enough "real" games to have made it worthwhile talking about. For many years I thought there wasn't a game on the platform that I liked. But then I played "The Apprentice", which is excellent and I'd highly recommend. I'm always happy to find genuinely good games on these failed systems that were so ridiculously expensive and seemingly full of promise to my young mind but all failed and left the market before I could realistically afford them.
Re: Evercade's Atari Carts Are Being Discontinued
@no_donatello hahahah yes that's the one! I actually think if you take the time to learn to play it properly its not as terrible as people make out. And you only hear that sound effect if you crash into something.... which admittedly happens a LOT until you get used to it. Most people get so infuriated by that single soundbite they never put in the time to actually "learn to fly" 😂
Re: Metal Slug 3 Teams Up With "Competitive RTS" Warpath
@-wc- YES. I very nearly posted that exact thought! Then didn't incase it seemed snarky. But you did it for me so thank you! 😉 Yes its very weird. Its not like 3 is the universally accepted pinacle of the series or anything either. Its a good one, don't get me wrong, but.... still...
Marco and SV-001 were in the first game, and Eri debuted in the second... so why is this Metal Slug 3 specifically? Is there a zombie mode perhaps?
I see the giant crabs at the end of the trailer, maybe they wanted to use those specifically, and the license was cheaper if they specified only assets from one game rather than the whole series? It seems very weird if that's the case.
Re: Evercade's Atari Carts Are Being Discontinued
@no_donatello Wow that's really cool! Yes Blue Lightning was the pack-in game. IIRC it was made by a British programmer/studio, who also made Cybermorph, which was the pack-in for the Jag! I hope they were paid very well! Though even if not, they at least know they made the 2 games that literally everybody who owned the Jag and CD played, so that's pretty neat.
I remember Vid Grid too, it was released on PC-CD first... I think it was the first or one of the first games to use "Video for Windows", the codec Microsoft was pushing that would allow smooth fullscreen videos on Windows PCs. I remember it being covered quite heavily by some PC magazines at the time. A record label was attached to it so the music and music video clips were actual decent stuff instead of cheap licensed stock clips or public domain stuff like most "interactive media" shovelware of the time.
That Highlander game was very similar to Alone in the Dark in its presentation, from what I remember. I've never played it but I remember seeing previews of it and being interested because it was based on the animated series not the films, and I liked that show. I think it did get a full release, though I may be wrong. The Jag CD only got a handful of retail releases and many of the games I saw previews for were scrapped or moved to other consoles.
Its really cool that he's still got it and it still works! It must be one of a very small handful of units still functioning. I think possibly the reason the lasers tend to burn out very quickly is that the discs aren't stadard CD-roms but are formatted to hold more data, something like 800mb. This would mean the laser is working extra hard, but also there is less room for error correction. Put those two together and you have read errors a plenty as soon as the laser starts getting tired or if the output from the factory wasn't 100%. Your brother got very lucky!
Re: A Fanmade Port Of SNK vs. Capcom For The C64 / C128 Is Now Available
This is amazing work! I'm especially impressed with how they made such clever use of PETSCii for the screen effects like the super moves, screen flashes, warps, colour flickers etc... very smart and super efficicent.
Of course a game with this amount of variety in sprites and backgrounds is only possible via cartridge for fast memory loading and swapping, and cartridge games ever really took off for C64 because tapes and discs were so much cheaper, but even still - had something of this quality been released back in the day, they would have sold like hotcakes!
Re: Evercade's Atari Carts Are Being Discontinued
@no_donatello Wow, really? Are you sure that it was a Jaguar and not another "failed" console of the era like the 3dO or CDi? Or your brother had a Jaguar but you experienced Myst on a something else your family owned like a PC/Mac/Playstation etc?
Its just that Myst was only on the Jaguar CD upgrade which is estimated to only have around 20k units sold to retaillers, and how many of them actually ended up in consumers hands is debatable... and the failure rate was extremely high so the handful of people who bought them often returned them. Add to the fact that barely any games were produced and barely any retailers sold them...
I'm not saying you're wrong, its perfectly possible your brother bought a Jag CD back in the day! Its just if so, you both had an extremely rare experience. I'm actually kinda jealous, I was excited reading about the system in magazines back in 93-94 and always wanted to own one, but never saw one in the wild.
Re: Evercade's Atari Carts Are Being Discontinued
As someone with over 2 decades in the entertainment industry producing all kinds of media and selling to many distributors and licensing to countless companies I completely understand that licenses are almost always temporary (limited by time windows), and often very specific in exactly what you can do with the product/brand you've licensed. Neither is the fault of Blaze/Evercade and I am sure they always try to get the best terms they possibly can.
But as someone who deeply cares about the history and preservation of old games and keeping them alive for new and returning audiences, its very frustrating that products such as the Evercade carts can't be for sale forever, just printing a new batch each time they sell out, if there is enough demand. At least putting up pre-orders for whatever the minimum amount required to make manufacturing a batch feasible would be a great workable solution (assuming you could get the licese terms in perpetuity... no mean feat.)
New physical copies of games are always welcome in my book, I feel the same about short print run companies like Limited Run, Super Rare et al, I understand its not possible for all products to always be available so even a temporary option with a small print run is significantly better than none at all. The Evercade carts fall into this same bracket, really. Collectors of them need to basically buy each new cartridges as they become available because you never know if they will still be around in the future, and if not, prices will probably significantly rise for the few in circulation, as per the market.
However, Atari is an interesting case. We all know that basically the company as it used to exist is no longer. Its just a brand/logo that is licensed out to pretty much anyone - hense why we have SO MANY new Atari devices, not to mention random seemingly unrelated products like "Atari" hotels and "Atari" cryptocurrencies/ERC tokens etc.
However, despite how easy it seems to be to pay your way into using the Atari brand to hawk your product, seemingly the Atari games were one of the most restrictive licenses of any of the companies/brands Evercade have worked with so far. The first two collections could only be played on the handheld devices because the license doesn't allow them to be played on home devices, like the Evercade VS. This doesn't apply to any other cartridge, as far as I know. And now we are seeing the licenses for these previous carts expiring in a pretty short time window.
I wonder how many other of the cartridges are on a similar time window (I'd wager many of them) and how long each window is? In a way, I think it would help transparency for the company, and wouldn't hurt them in any way - if they made this clear via their website when launching new products. It would actually presumably drive more people to buy the cartirdges right away, incase they can't in the future, or even increase sales numbers/speed as speculative purchases for when they go out of print, like the many people who buy Limited Run games assuming they will increase in value... (I'm not saying I approve of this practice, but it would make more money for Evercade, and they are a business afterall).
Of course, the only company that Evercade has worked with so far that is MORE restrictive than Atari has been Capcom... and Taito if you include those "non-Evercade" branded but none-the-less Evercade compatible handhelds with the built in games that Blaze is selling. However, as neither of these companies even allows the games to be put on cartridge, I strongly disapprove of them working with them at all... it goes against the unique selling point and stated ethos of the brand... but that is a rant I've already had on this site several times already! 😂
Re: The Smiths Have Just Got Their Own Unofficial Text Adventure Game For C64 & Oric
Johnny Marr d'en avoir marre. Aussi!
Bam ba da bam bam
[edit] Considering the pun, the Smiths music, and the retro gamer links of Alizée I was already pretty happy with my dad-joke XP boost from this post. But the fact this game is a text adventure means the Ascii is even more perfect than originally planned. Or maybe I'm a comedy genius. Yeah, I'mma go with that one. 😅
@Poodlestargenerica 😂
Re: Random: Rotted Skull Of 3DO Doom's Cyberdemon Sells On eBay For Over $1000
"Burger Becky" Heineman is a legend in programming circles. The fact that she managed to make 3dO Doom in the ridiculous circumstances she was given is a miracle.
In the late 70s, as a frustrated kid who couldn't afford games for her Atari 2600, she casually reverse engineered the entire system so that she could both create her own games, and make affordable pirate copies of existing ones.
In addition to this, she was the first person to win a National Videogames competition way back in 1980, becoming the Space Invaders champion. This got her a lot of fame and was hired to work on the book "How to Master Video Games". When she explained that she had literally reverse engineered the code of Space Invaders to work out how to be the best player, she was hired on the spot to start actually developing games... her CV from 1983-present day is insane.
@TwistC I concur, dope mask! I echo the suggestion to mount it like a deer head. Maybe frame the certificate too and hang it nearby.
Re: Sega Forever Games Are Being Delisted From iOS And Android
The app was attrocious and an insult to the limited selection of games available on there. Real missed opportunity as with actually good emulation and covering some systems and arcade titles other than only Genesis ones could have made it something special. No advertising plus good emulation and growing selection of Sega titles over the gamut of systems (even just Master System, Mega CD, 32X and some Sega 16 arcade titles if the newer stuff was too hard/demanding) and I'd have happily paid a subscription. As it was though, it actively left a sour taste in the mouth of many fans, from what reactions I saw. Wasted opportunity kinda thing.
However the twitter account and social media stuff shifted into a really nice direction promoting their history and showcasing some really cool stuff. It will be a shame if they don't continue with it or something similar, Sega have such a rich history to dig through and I love that there are people on their staff who know and care about this stuff. The recent video of the restoration of the Trocadéro Sega World Sonic statue was truly heart warming. I can't wait to take a picture with him next time I'm at their offices.
Re: Parker Brothers' Empire Strikes Back Gets Remarkable Port For The Commodore Plus/4
🎵 You could have called this game "Bird Vs Camel" and no-one would have argued with you! 🎵
Seriously though, that's crazy impresive for a Plus/4 (which is closer to a C16 than C64)
Re: 'Crash vs. Spyro Racing' Prototype Discovered
"Graphic design is my passion"
[edit] In all seriousness though, MVG is a good dude I've got a lot of time for him. I love that when he unearths stuff like this he always archives everything and makes it public rather than selling to a collector that may sit on it and never dump/release it.
Re: Random: Till Receipt For ClayFighter: Sculptor's Cut Reaches $500 On eBay
The kind of collectors who'll pay $5K for a boxed copy of this game aren't doing it to play it, its for one of two reasons: Speculation that it will increase in value, or because they are an actual gamer who feel attached to owning something infamous with unique story behind its history.
The "story" of why this game is rare is what that makes it so expensive in the first place. Most games with a similarly short print run don't reach this level of value. Of course, this game was Blockbuster exclusive - probably the most famous example of a Blockbuster exclusive, because people who were around in the early 90s remember the big advertising campaign around the original Clayfighter, so there is some franchise/novelty appeal to this one.
So, some people have nostalgia for the series, and MANY more have nostalgia for Blockbuster specifically. I can very easily see that if you're willing to pay $5k for the game, predominantly for this story and link to Blockbuster, then a blockbuster receipt to go with the game makes it a lot more appealing. $300 to be able to enhance that story seems a bargain by comparison.
Of course... I personally think they are insane 😂 But each to their own. I think the most I've ever paid for a videogame is around £500, but that was years ago when I was a bit more flush. (Film industry is NOT what it was pre-pandemic!) Many would say even that's far too much. I understand those who think $70 is too high for a game. Nowadays I wouldn't pay £500 that much for a single game, no matter how rare. I really want a physical copy of Shantae and the Pirate's Curse for Switch but I'm not comfortable paying the kind of money it goes for.
However, I do understand the value of having a game tied to a retailer you are nostalgic for. I've paid very slightly extra for games on ebay if they come with price stickers from Woolworths, Toys R Us or Dixons, as these were the places I bought games from most often as a kid. If they come with a reciept, I get a kick out of being able to see the original price, date and location and imagine buying it back then. I certainly don't throw receipts away when I find them inside games - there's something neat about feeling attached to the history of the item. Not $300 worth of neat, but that's just me.
Re: Anniversary: CD-ROM Trailblazer 'Myst' Turns 30 Today
Myst was indeed a very big deal at the time. Interestingly it was a game that many parents of my friends played, even though none of them were "gamers" - it was seen as more like intellectual interactive entertainment rather than a "game for kids"...
I feel like including the above video titled "Myst Launch Trailer" is somewhat misleading. Thats a modern remake and couldn't be further from how the original looked in 1993. Here's the legit launch trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UYfMaDnsoY&ab_channel=Adventure%27sIndex
Though I feel even that trailer is misleading of what the actual game was like. It was mostly a slideshow where you clicked on elements to move to the next slide. Obviously different genres, but comparable because of the same launch year - for me at the time, Doom felt 10 generations ahead of this, because you could actually move around a 3d environment in real time. First time I'd ever seen that pulled off actually convincingly and at a good framerate.
Re: The Keyboard-Packing Aya Neo Slide Is Available To Order Today
Assuming this is a Windows device like its bigger brother, rather than Android like the pocket version, this could be the first such device to actually convince me to make the jump. Configuring the multitude of emulators and software that I'd want on this type of device with an onscreen keyboard (or even fiddling with attaching an external one each time I want to tweak something) sounds like a nightmare and if a device tlike this could also replace my need for a laptop when going on small trips or doing business in coffee shops etc, I'm sold.
Re: 'Aaling the Ghost' Is A Promising New Game Boy RPG, Now On Kickstarter
This game looks really nice, on my radar for sure. I know just how hard making an impressive GB title can be, there's some deceptively impressive work going on here to juggle everything.
@TransmitHim Good spot, that's concerning... like literally the cash is going towards developing the game, but doesn't buy you a copy and you'll have to pay again?
I'm toying with making NES and GB games with my mascot Hazel, as side projects to her main game. Just hobbyist tinkering for now. If I ever did a kickstarter, it would 100% be to fund the physical carts (and also make a small profit of course, I'm not saying devs shouldn't pay themselves!)
Considering with all my games I'll be including not only a nice box but manual, map, poster etc (I love designing that kind of stuff) I imagine a cart only option would be quite a bit cheaper. One thing I hadn't considered at all is that some people might want a cart only option, but it makes sense that many people collect both GB and NES as cart only... thanks for putting that on my radar, I'll definitely do that for those that want it.
Re: What's Happening Over At Sega Forever, Sega's Dedicated Retro Channel?
On brief glances I always liked that logo/banner art - but I just realised the Saturn pad is mirrored, and its plugged into the wrong port. Looks like the artist mirrored the refererence image, corrected the logos in photoshop, but didn't think to correct the pad, not realising it wasn't a symetrical layout. But even that wouldn't explain why its plugged into the wrong port, so they must have used 2 reference images.
Upon checking, all the console and pad images match up with the Evan Amos photos from Wikimedia commons including the separated Saturn & Mk2 US / J-S pad. The TV is a Mini Star / Tele Star which are the most common models to come up when you search for stock images of portable crt tvs.
The fact they made those 2 really obvious mistakes makes me feel like they chose an artist who has no familiarity with the console or even retro controls whatsoever, who just looked up free stock images, made a photoshop collage, then traced over it... or even more likely (as specifically pixel artists presumably are well aquainted with retro consoles) used and AI pixel art filter, of which there are several that work very well and give results akin to this.
That makes me sad. And the fact this is the main promotional image for their tribute to their history is doubly sad.
Re: A Rare Mega Drive 'Wonder Midi' Cart Has Just Gone On Sale In Japan
WonderDog on the cart, manual and box! You love to see it!
I always prefered the MultiMega (CD-X) to the WonderMega (X-Eye), as to me it looked like a high end portable CD player. But all obscure Sega hardware is cool with me! I hadn't realised til relatively recently there were 2 quite different looking hardware models of the WonderMega, I have the first but not the second. Need to fix that.
I included the console logos for these and similar hardware variants / Sega compatibles as easter eggs in the attract mode for my Sonic compilation. They appear if you let it play a second time through. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvTiAmOH8MM
Re: Best Amiga Games Of All Time
@RetroGames Well, it was predominantly a system designed around a keyboard and mouse, in the early 80s where single button Atari style joysticks were the norm.
There were a huge variety of more console/arcade like experiences, many of them excellent and the hardware easily kept up with the Megadrive and SNES, sometimes surpassing what they oculd do... but that darn single button joystick really held them back. This often meant "up to jump" in platformers, and ruined 1v1 fighting games, arguably the 2 most popular genres of the early 90s.
The "up to jump" thing is nowadays entirely fixed by emulation, or even joysticks for real hardware that include a second button that doubles as "up" such as the solutions from Monster joysticks - hashtag not sponsored. [edit] And yes, I know Amiga could technically support more than one button on controllers, adn some games utilise it. Its just that most people didn't have controllers to support that, so devs didn't tend to include the option or design around it.
Re: Best Amiga Games Of All Time
Could easily add to the list but this does a great job at giving a wide overview of genres and every game here is a certified banger.
Worth pointing out that while the 500 was obviously the best selling model, I'd hazard a guess that almost all of them were upgraded to 1mb making them 500 Plus in all but name and case badge. Growing up, it seemed more of my friends owned 600 and 1200 but that's probably just because of our exact age and the models that were being pushed at the time. People with older siblings often had a 500. All 3 of those systems are wonderful.
Re: A Classic 'Mortal Kombat' Bootleg For The NES Is Getting An Overhaul
@Drax01 Already subbed!
Re: A Classic 'Mortal Kombat' Bootleg For The NES Is Getting An Overhaul
@Drax01 You are doing fantastic work, this is really impressive!