smoreon

@-wc- Nope. I have the Wind Waker bundle- got it used, but it has an exhaustive list of contents on the box- there's only HDMI, though the console works with a Wii composite cable if you have one.

So you're right. It's apparently the first console to only ship with an HDMI cable!
Key word is "only", though, as the Elite Xbox 360 (2007) not only supported HDMI, but also came with a cable.

I like the wording you used: that Wii U was the first console "purpose built for HD". Those fake HD 7th gen systems can go jump in a beautifully-rendered lake!

@wiiware Yeah, Wii U is a simple way to get crisp video over HDMI. It'll still be pretty pixelated, though.
From what I've seen, there's also some cool stuff you can do with GameCube games via Nintendont (homebrew for Wii U). which lets you play them with improved performance and I think widescreen as well.

@RetroGames I know a few of these, so I'll start it off:

• NES and SMS were fully mono, even internally.
• I believe Genesis always shipped with a mono RF adapter, but the capability for stereo is there if you buy a composite cable for the Model 2. IIRC, Model 1 can't do stereo over its main output, but does have a stereo headphone jack.
• Not sure about the launch SNES (I thought it might've come with a mono RF cable?), but later models came with a stereo composite cable, as did basically every console from then up to- and including- the PS3!

Personally, I used to run my consoles through a VCR to my TV, which was mono. At some point later on, when I had a stereo TV, I realized that this setup was still crunching everything down to mono, so I rewired it to skip the VCR and its cable, and things sounded so much fuller. It was just typical, muddy TV audio, but it still seemed so cool to finally have stereo, as I hadn't been spoiled by actual high-quality sound!

"the ginormous world that Volgarr has to run through [is] this absolutely insane texture"
This part is surprising, considering how much tiling there is in the background graphics.

I'm guessing the devs found that it was easier to assemble the environment in a graphical tool before exporting it as a single image, as opposed to just importing the individual tiles into the game editor and building the levels there. This is fine on modern systems- or the Neo Geo, which is built for that kind of thing- but very inefficient and very different from something you'd see on, say, the SNES!

@wiiware Maybe you already have experience here, but just in case:
Keep in mind that these upscalers are ultimately working with 480p video, so even the "good" ones will make the games look pixelated on a modern (especially 4K) screen.

Unless you use an emulator to play in actual, native 4K, you'll inevitably have to choose between blurry and pixelated, as that's all the Wii console itself can do!

@-wc- You can get male-male USB-C adapters for about $5, so I guess it would be possible to just attach this drive to one of those instead... but it would have to be pretty light, or the weight could cause problems.

In general, this kind of thing is a big- and all too often overlooked- problem with portable devices, especially of the Apple variety: what's the point of an ultra-slim device, when you need a USB hub and other adapters to make it fully functional? I'd rather just have a bulky laptop that has all that stuff built in, as that bulky, singular slab is a lot more portable in reality.

I don't remember hearing about any of this before, even the old news, so thanks for bringing it to my attention!

Pac-Man World 3 still ended up being a little darker than the previous ones, didn't it- but only slightly? I never did get around to playing that one.

From a practicality standpoint, it's hard to see the use case for any portable Wii, unless it's some kind of emulation-based thing like the Steam Deck. Way too many controllers, wires, etc., on top of the actual device and its deck.

Very cute, though, I will give it that!

Brett (usually credited as "B Jones") was also responsible for voicing Cassandra in Perfect Dark and hiding pieces of cheese everywhere in that same game- on top of being a major contributor to making Rare's games look so good, of course!

@Yousef- It's okay, no offense taken!
I just figured you had missed out on the wave of modern Contra-likes, and might want to know about them.

@Yousef- Unexplored by devs, or just by you?
Super Cyborg, Blazing Chrome, Balacera Bros, Biomech Hell, and Spidersaurs all come to mind, and I'm sure there are more!

Be sure to check out Blazing Chrome, at least!

Oof... some elements of this are sad, frustrating, and making me feel really old (when I'm not even 40).

On the other hand, it's great to see game history being taught by those who are knowledgeable and passionate about it, and these problems of disinterest being discussed and worked through!
I'm optimistic, considering both this and the interest that a small number of younger gamers have shown about gaming history.
I think the potential is there for younger people to come to appreciate these older games and the accompanying context. They all just need to keep an open mind.

@Mario500 I had a hard time even figuring out what you were talking about, but I eventually found it! There doesn't appear to be anything remotely offensive past that point, from what I can tell, so you should be able to continue on and finish the article- assuming that's what you're here for.

TE's material typically seems to aim for a roughly "PG" level of family-friendliness, however, so future articles probably won't agree with you.

Now we non-Japanese gamers will be able to fight muscular snowmen and muscular Renaissance paintings for the first time, on top of the muscular Elvis submarine and muscular Thomas the Tank Engine from the first game (previously on Wii VC).

@Daggot Whether it's the originals, or DD Neon vs SoR4, Streets of Rage has always been better than Double Dragon, in terms of depth, balance, and polish. Though, in fairness, DD1 and Neon are both much older than their SoR counterparts.

Neon does have more depth than might be apparent on the surface, however, and is well worth another try- even just to play through it once on the standard difficulty, if nothing else. And I really like its presentation, especially the soundtrack!

@mariteaux Good points, especially this line: "they have made me appreciate games I've never cared about before".

It might sound crazy at first (and sure, there are people who will play a game only for its achievements, but that's a different matter), but I think this is really the secret strength of achievements: encouragement to play and appreciate the game more.

For those of us who weren't gaming in the early '80s, achievements are an incentive to take a closer look at these seemingly repetitive games and understand their depth a bit better, rather than simply putting in five minutes and then walking away.

And even for somewhat newer titles, they can provide an excuse to go back and play an old favourite in a new way.

@AFourEyedGeek Are you sure you're not thinking of the 32X version? That one had simplified levels and "fart like music", IIRC.

The SNES version was ironically more faithful to the original level designs than the other consoles' ports were, and the worst thing I could say about its music is that the guitar in "At Doom's Gate" sounds like a muffled cello. (So many SNES games had lame instrument samples with no punch to them. Less a technical issue than a stylistic one.) The slower, darker, more atmospheric tracks might even be better than the PC version, but that's a matter of opinion.

"every sound file being normalized to 10 full seconds long"
Why, just why?

This is one of the great things about emulation, though. Some games are awful and borderline unplayable because of performance problems, and emu features like overclocking and fast loading can make these issues simply go away.

Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly wouldn't have been so badly received if it had run at a silky 60fps, already great titles like Perfect Dark and Blood Omen would've had nothing to criticize if their performance issues were ironed out, and even the legendarily awful Sonic '06 would have been more palatable if the loading screens weren't constantly getting in the way.

"Football Soccer"? That's already sounding pretty evil.
(Most Brits already get upset by the word "soccer" in itself. I don't want to see how this will go over.)

Correction/clarification: This is still 30fps, just like the original.

They're claiming that it's "60fps", but in this case, it only means that the emulated Neo Geo is outputting the full 60Hz, regardless of what the actual game is doing.

In other words, it's a roundabout way of saying "full speed".

"Empty shell of a dream" has to be the saddest sounding console name I've ever heard, real or fictional.

@LowDefAl Yeah, if there was a non-zero chance of it corrupting, then that'd be a game breaker. No point in making the third chapter more accessible, if the save could just go bad by the time you get there.

Or, maybe they were just being over-cautious. I never had a physical Sega CD, so I don't know how reliable the internal memory was.

In any case, I'm glad to have left behind the days of tiny storage media that can only hold a few save files!

What's that bit about "former Sega Rally composer Johnny Gioeli"?
I think that's a mistake... unless Gioeli worked on some later Sega Rally games, and I somehow never knew it. (Within the Sega fandom, he's best known for doing the vocals in a number of Sonic games.)

Otherwise, really enjoyed the interview. Here's hoping this game can see a release, with or even without Sega.

@Spider-Kev Oh, yeah, I get that!
Some have criticized the obsessive "hoarding" mentality around preservation, and while I get that a lot of games and materials have seemingly little historical relevance, I still have to disagree with the idea that these lesser-known things should just be dropped.

We each have our own favourites: games that we might remember fondly, and treasure as part of our collection. Maybe we want to see them remastered or re-released, or we're craving any development materials and prototypes that may turn up. And not everyone has the same short list of favourites!

My most-wanted prototype is an obscure one, as are many of my most-wanted games: games that other people may think are unimportant and not worth preserving!

@Spider-Kev On the real NES, even if I admittedly haven't played much of it.
Sorry, though, I don't quite follow- where are you going with this?

@Spider-Kev Yes, actually. Hope I'm not ruining your point by saying that!

@Azuris My point was more that they seemingly had no clue what Puyo Puyo was, even despite there being multiple western releases at that time.

But yeah, that trend of calling things "Doom clone", etc., was especially prevalent back then- now we just add "-like" to the end of everything (e.g., soulslike), which is obviously different and so much better! The more things change...

I think the bigger issue is that they treated this like an all-new Tetris "clone", having apparently never heard of Kirby's Avalanche/Ghost Trap or Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine! (Or, you know, Puyo Puyo itself, seeing as they also covered imports.)

Strange that they'd be partway through developing a GBA game in 2007, when the DS had already been around since 2004. I know it wouldn't have been the only GBA game to release in '07-'08, but it's still unusual, especially for something that's not a kids' TV show tie-in.

The thing that makes this so difficult and obscure, which some sources (including this article) are missing, is that you have to deliberately neglect your pet in a specific way after spending all of that time taking perfect care of it!

Any clues as to when these were made? Some of those renders remind me of Kameo, so I wouldn't be surprised if they were made around the time Kameo's own design was established (2001?) for the GameCube version. But that's not much to go on.

How did such an unremarkable shooter have such a wild sequel? This is like some crazy combo of Life Force and Abaddox!

This was a neat one. Even if you're not into single-screen games, the NES version pulls some interesting twists!

@tektite_captain They might be going for a '70s or early '80s aesthetic with those stripes... charming in its way, but definitely not to everyone's taste!

@Gamelore If you experience struggles and difficulties in day-to-day life, then why would you want to also have virtual struggles and difficulties while you're unwinding?

I guess Cicero (who wrote what became the "lorem ipsum" filler text) was wrong about no one wanting pain for its own sake!

PS: I get the appeal of overcoming challenges in a game, having beaten some tough games in the past, and I also feel that reloading a state specifically is a mild form of cheating, but what is the point of video games, if you're not having fun?

Cool, it looks kind of like Strider 2, visually speaking.
Almost like it's from a lost era of 32-bit beat-em-ups.

Correction: the article says 500 rounds, not hours. I imagine this would take more like 10 hours, assuming there aren't other criteria for unlocking everything!

@Sketcz My thoughts exactly, except I figured my career would've started with countless hours of designing particle effects for Assassin's Creed under crunch conditions... and then moved on to the lame GaaS type stuff!

Ah, well, we've still got the old games. And N64-style sensibilities are starting to come back, so maybe there are some decent game dev jobs waiting for us at some smaller studios?

So they have "locations related to prostitution" in the games, but it's the colour pink that's the problem? Interesting logic.

I guess it's along the lines of some kid-friendly depictions of pirates: they can dress and talk like pirates, but they aren't allowed to actually do any piratey things, as that would be inappropriate.

Finally, a handheld system that doesn't cause hand cramps!

I just have to wonder: who thought it was a good idea to have the primary button on the right, and the secondary button on the bottom? No human's thumbs reach across the buttons at such an angle!

Nintendo must have already realized the insanity of this by 1990, as they used B as the jump button in Super Mario World... but that's a launch game, which makes me wonder why they didn't just move the buttons around so that A is on the bottom!

Even stranger is that they switched to the more ergonomic setup of B on the left and A on the bottom with N64, but then reverted to the weird layout for systems like DS, Wii U, and Switch.
Meanwhile, Nintendo and PlayStation games alike have been a hodgepodge of B to jump, A to jump, triangle to cancel, X to cancel, circle to cancel, etc. etc., and this still hasn't been fully settled!

@Spider-Kev Well, to be fair, you can "cross" something out when it's false...
However, we have the early PS1 instruction manuals on our side!
Early game releases with the long boxes actually spelled out the button names, and sure enough: "EKS BUTTON"

All it took was Sony Europe's community manager making a single post on Twitter, and suddenly everyone switched to "cross".

@GravyThief Yeah, it's only fair that people not have their original ideas stolen, when applicable.

What really bugs me is how wide and far-reaching some of these patents can be (as some trademark registrations have also been). Sometimes a concept is simply the logical solution to a problem, and it's only natural that many different parties would have that same idea, independently of each other. But the first one through the gate claims it, forcing everyone else to come up with convoluted workarounds- or just leave the problem unresolved.

@GhaleonUnlimited Yeah, I'm sure they'd use the name if they actually had the rights!

I was just making fun of the lazy reboot titles that have been so common for the past decade or two.

Hmm, it seems that the egg references are no coincidence: this is quite Tamagotchi-inspired.
I might've had my fill of virtual pet shenanigans for one lifetime, though this is on a whole other level compared to the original Tamagotchi...

PS: "A Long Tamago"? 😆

@Guru_Larry As far as lazy titles go, this is all right. At least they didn't call it "NBA Jam"... not to be confused with the 1993 NBA Jam.

I've always found the Zeebo interesting, especially after seeing that it has an N64-style demake of Resident Evil 4!

"the prospect of working with McDoland's"

Is "McDoland's" a really sketchy knock-off of McDonald's, possibly featuring as its mascot a misshapen duck that says and does vulgar things?

It's unfortunate that a tool like this has never been implemented at a system/emulator level, but it's apparently way harder (if not impossible) to do that on PS2, compared to something like GameCube (which has had Free Look for a long time now).

On the plus side, this per-game camera mod sounds a lot more full-featured! I wonder if the game even knows the camera is being moved, and adjusts the culling to match, as that could be interesting.

Is it just me, or is there something unintentionally funny about the name "Marble of Souls"?
I guess it's the way they took a typical Castlevania-sounding name and then injected this ordinary-sounding object ("Marble") into it.

PS: I'm gathering that some people don't already know... look up Konami's pachinko/pachislot games based on their best franchises. And then weep.