smoreon

@UK_Kev Is it an anti-PC gaming thing, maybe? People don't want to play an emulated game on their PC, so they get a mini console... which is a budget PC in disguise, which runs emulators in disguise?

I also find the desire for more consoles (N64 mini, Dreamcast 2, etc.) a bit puzzling. I'm all for making old games legally available for purchase again (digitally or in compilations), but having to buy a dedicated machine for each batch of games starts to become a waste of money and space.
Okay, I do understand it at the surface level, but it just doesn't hold up when I think about it.

@themightyant Between that ambiguous button/nub thing and the way the start/select are on the screen bezel, it's giving me a bit of an AI vibe.

Agreed that it looks uncomfortable: besides hand cramps, that D-pad looks like it's hard enough to leave an imprint on the player's thumb.

It's a cute little (mock-up) device, though, and I also miss the old days of Sega. I just wouldn't necessarily want to actually play on this!

The graphics are already looking great, and well ahead of the NES version.
Sound is also really well done... even though the PSG can only do so much, unfortunately. (I'm curious, though, what could be done with PCM drums and FM for the rest. I bet it could be a lot like the arcade.)

That's a weird thing for Kirkhope to say, considering these same guys did their own attempt at a Banjo game, and it sold well (despite some criticisms).

To say nothing of the millions of fans clamouring for "Banjo-Threeie" for the past 23 years!

@GhaleonUnlimited There is already a 60fps mod for Journey of Dreams! As far as I know, it needs to be disabled to get past one specific section, but it works flawlessly for the rest of the game.

PS: Sonic's cousin? I guess that is true, in a sense...

The N64 homebrew and modding scene is relatively young (compared to something like Genesis), but it has already started to produce some impressive stuff. I'm looking forward to this, and to whatever else comes after!

Nice! A subtle upgrade, but this sounds like the definitive Zelda 1 experience. My next playthrough just might be with this on an emulator, instead of the original cart.

@ganonms I take it sunlight's not an issue, but what about humidity? Even in Canada, I've seen it do a lot of damage to DVD cases, in particular.

Most of my games are stored in a dark room with no sunlight, and the others are only getting a bit of indirect light.

That said, while it's always preferable to have games that are pristine, undamaged, and CIB, I'm ultimately in it for the gameplay experience, much more than the collecting itself. And it's good, because there's so much that can go wrong: our stuff won't last forever, and it's always just one incident away from damage or destruction.
Better to enjoy it, than to stress out over it!

At first, this seemed like a crazy way to announce the signing. But when you think of it, it's really quite Sensible.

Yeah, it's unfortunate that F-Zero has been neglected for so long, though I am glad that at least Fire Emblem and Metroid weren't left to the same fate!

So essentially, Sakamoto and Tanabe are using their clout to keep Metroid alive? (That theory holds water, as there probably aren't any influential figures advocating for F-Zero.) In any case, I can't see that the issue is specifically GX's sales, as it reportedly sold well over a million copies, landing in the top 20 on GCN- and outselling all of the Metroid games on Wii, I might add!
But it could be that the cost of developing a modern sequel is considered too high for a game that will only bring in maybe a quarter of Mario Kart's sales, at best. Why spend $10M developing that, when you could spend next to nothing and get Mario Kart 8 Deluxe?
...or maybe Miyamoto still has a chip on his shoulder. Who knows?

At the end of the day, Nintendo makes some frustrating and/or baffling decisions as to which series they develop, and when, and to what degree... "Nintendo gonna Nintendo", as they say!

@Tobunari Yeah, both SA games let you move the file, but not copy it. I forget if any games like GX, etc., are fully locked or not.

Right, you can offload your stuff to an external drive, but it's still tied to that specific console. Nintendo did offer migration tools to go from one Wii U to another (or from a Wii to a Wii U), but those delete the original data- unless there's an exploit involving a last-second unplug!

@Tobunari Good catch. Seems I misremembered that one.

Another couple of files that are locked, however, are the Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 Chao Gardens, so again, some of the files that people might care most about backing up.
Fortunately, I didn't notice any others from this quick glance. And I backed up all of my saves via unofficial means a few years back, so I'm covered!

I don't think Wii U allows backing up in any form. IIRC, I looked into it years ago, and you can only move all of your save data to another console- no cloning.

It's cool to see these making a return, but man... if I stopped being a cheapskate and bought all of the re-releases like this that interested me, I'd be at least $1000 poorer by now.
Or more like $1500 in Canadian money.

El Viento is one of the most tempting ones, though, as I hear it's really quite good, plus it has an early Sakuraba soundtrack. And I've always had a strange curiosity/interest in the hilariously janky follow-up, Earnest Evans.

Very cool that they pulled this off!

...but on the other hand, I don't really see any reason to actually play this over the 2020 PC version.

@Tobunari My point is that Fire Emblem was a niche series (much more than F-Zero), but it was given more chances, and it eventually became a big success, starting with Awakening.

You do make an interesting point: Awakening appealed to a broad, casual audience by being easier and focusing more on stuff besides the actual strategy- and that was when FE's fortunes hit a turning point.

Would Nintendo have to dumb down a new F-Zero, or at least change how they market it, in order for it to succeed today? Maybe, looking at Fire Emblem's journey. On the other hand, it's not the '00s anymore. Nintendo has a huge install base this time around, and tons of passionate, hardcore fans. It's easily conceivable that there are plenty of potential buyers who are eager to either revisit the series, or to see what was so special about it- and who won't be put off by some challenge.
Not enough to generate Mario Kart sales numbers, obviously, but easily enough to be a success.

On that note... what sales figures would you consider a success, if a new F-Zero came to Switch? And what would GX have had to sell, to count as a success?

So Sega does have the rights to the HotD1 soundtrack?
I still don't know why they had to have it redone for the remake.

@NatiaAdamo Yeah, as far as actual record-keeping goes, I'd put this in a separate category, at best... though it can be hard to confirm whether any game was continuously in development, or if it had gaps in between.

Apparently, Duke Nukem Forever was actively in development for all of its 15 years? I assume Metroid Dread was shelved for a while, though, so it wouldn't count. What about Beyond Good and Evil 2?

@no_donatello Haha, I always hated that so many people flocked to the PS2 and left the GameCube struggling- it was even commonly believed back then that the PS2 was technically superior!

While the PS2's engineering had plenty of downsides (remember the failure rate?), the console had tons of great games that I've enjoyed catching up on- and in the hands of the right programmers and artists, even the hardware could really sing!

And I agree that the sixth gen was the peak of gaming, in most ways. (Back then, though, we didn't have $3 Steam deals, so there's that!)

This is a pretty obscure selection (only heard the occasional reference to Madoola, personally), but it's great to see Sunsoft making a comeback in general.

Here's hoping Journey to Silius is next!
(And Gremlins 2, Batman for Genesis, and Return of the Joker for NES, if anyone's taking wishes!)

I'd love to see the actual Goemon games from the '90s- especially the first N64 one- make it to modern platforms, as I missed out the first time around.

This also looks great, though! Hopefully it comes to PC/Xbox as well as Switch.

Is this a record for the longest game development, from inception to release?

Also, I wonder how much Brixius will be overhauling the game now, and if the final result will be a mix of old and new design sensibilities. (Seeing as there's voting involved, it's safe to say that he's not sticking to his original docs 100%.)

@AJB83 It's actually a free update. Guess you'll just have to buy another copy or something!

@FatPlumber Strange. I distinctly remember my friends running into problems when mixing JP and NA saves.
I looked it up to confirm just yesterday, and sure enough, that's the common knowledge- that the card needs to be dedicated to either Japan or other regions, but not both at once.

It might depend on the game, where some force a reformat, but others just have text glitches. (Do any of your save names have glitch characters where the kanji/kana should be?)

@JayJ Switching to hard drives brought a 5x speed increase, yet slow loading somehow still managed to be more of a problem than ever.
RAM and storage requirements outpaced media speeds from around 2005 to 2020 (at least on consoles), until SSDs turned the tide back... for now.

While cartridges held back the consoles of the day in several ways (not denying their advantages!), it was always great when we switched to the next storage medium and got what seemed like unlimited space. There was no incentive- or option- for devs or publishers to skimp on storage media, cutting out content and compressing the heck out of everything to make it all fit.

@AJB83 Did the AI overhaul not really affect the game much?

I played the original version, and really liked it, even if I normally prefer fully 3D racing games. I haven't played in a few years, but it's impressive how much work ansdor has been putting into free, major updates since its release.

Apparently, Tukwila is in Washington state.
The article didn't specify, and it had me wondering which state- or country- this was!

@TheFatPlumber You can mix NA and EU saves on the same memory card, but you need to reformat or else use a separate card for Japanese games, for whatever reason.

Maybe it's a character encoding issue?
I don't see how region locking would have been difficult to implement, now or then (just check the card for any saves with a different region ID than the current game), but seeing as it's only a partial region lock, I'm thinking there's a real technical hurdle.

@Tobunari Yeah, I figured, but it's unfortunate.

Smash Bros. Melee was also locked, as I recall... so basically, all of the games that you'd most want to back up.

@Tobunari Neither the anime nor its two spin-off games on the GBA did especially well, as far as I know, but GX still sold well- just not Mario Kart numbers.

I fully expect that Nintendo will keep ignoring the series (or perhaps teasing it with cameos, etc., at best) for many more years to come, but I do believe that a new F-Zero could be very successful today. If nothing else, a lot more people have a Nintendo console now than they did in 2003.
Plus, things can change over time. It's not like Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance was flying off shelves by the millions, either, but look at the series now!

@Poodlestargenerica It was uncommon on the 360, but not unheard of. There were a few RPGs like Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, and then there was Rage, which came on 3 discs, thanks to its extravagant megatexture system.

I don't think there were any multi-disc games on PS3 at all. (Except maybe bonus discs, and stuff like that.)

EDIT: Wii had almost no multi-disc games either, despite its discs having the same capacity as the 360. Only one I've heard of is Dragon Quest X.

@Kienda I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few factors, but the number of discs seems like a valid enough issue (if not the sole cause).

MGS4 would need at least 6 DVDs as-is. Maybe 4 with enough compression, but there's bound to be a point where the video quality is unacceptable, or the sheer amount of content starts to be an issue.
Plus, publishers did seem somewhat averse to using multiple discs on DVD-based systems, for one reason or another.

Or maybe it just made for a convenient excuse to cover up Konami's/Kojima's bias?

@KingMike I never knew that!
No surprise that things went as they did, though- what do you think the profit margins were on selling just 512 KB of flash for $20 or more?
(Consider that the PS2 launched over a year earlier, and all its memory cards were 8 MB!)

What about locked files, like with F-Zero GX?
If this 8BitMods card uses the GameCube's own interface for copying from a real memory card, then some games' files most likely can't be copied to it.

Fortunately, there are other backup solutions involving SD cards and homebrew, and they can override the lock, but the MemCard Pro GC doesn't seem too good for backing up existing saves- only managing new ones, or those that were already ripped.

A co-op shooter RPG? Not what I expected, based on the art style, but I'm definitely going to watch this one.

Also liking what they're doing with the graphics! PS1 graphics have their own unique appeal, as do other old consoles like N64, SNES, or Genesis. I wouldn't say it's specifically because of the technical limitations (I don't even like pixelation), but because of the art styles associated with those times.

2013 was the year of Luigi. 2023 is the year of Wario!

This seemed underwhelming, based on the headline: okay, the collective power of the internet was able to find Shogo Sakai a few hundred new subscribers. So?
But no, it was more than that, and in a day!

I'll have to check these videos out. Sakai isn't talked about often, but he's done some epic compositions and arrangements, with Smash Bros. Melee setting the tone not just for early-2000s Hal, but arguably for the GameCube itself.
And much of Kirby Air Ride's music is up there as well!

Yes to the question, but there's more to it than that. As has been mentioned in some of the above comments, there's a mix of "Nintendocentrism" and Americentrism here, both in history and in general discussion. Lots of Americans in their 30s fondly remember the days of the NES being the definitive way to play video games; therefore, those are obviously the best, most important, and most influential games of the late '80s... though those who lived in Europe (Commodore Amiga), South America (Sega Master System), or East Asia (PC Engine/Turbografx-16) might not see things the same way- not to mention those who were able to experience cutting-edge tech in the arcade!

Of course, once some ideas start circulating on the internet, you can expect them to be cited, quoted, misquoted, and otherwise regurgitated ad infinitum.
I'm under 40, so I didn't see firsthand whether the game industry was obliterated in 1983 and then single-handedly resurrected by Nintendo in 1985. But the internet says so, and a lot of people seem to think so, so it must be true!

I suppose the lesson here is to keep an open mind, and to question what we think and hear: is it actually true, or are they all wrong? Are we wrong?

PS: tons of people played Tony Hawk on the PlayStation in its time, but how many of them are the hardcore gaming enthusiasts who still talk about games and game history to this day? Just a thought.

@Damo In that case, I can think of several Wii U games which deserve to be listed as the most influential games of all time!

Cute, but not exactly cuddly.
Too bad the Raspberry Pi didn't exist back then!

@tektite_captain That would be an interesting topic to look into. Sega had their games on other companies' systems within a year of the announcement, with Sonic Adventure 2 Battle coming to the GameCube just 6 months after its Dreamcast release, for example.

Did they start asking around for dev kits before announcing that they were going third-party, or was it a scramble to get things going after January?

@RupeeClock Okay, if we're talking about the big picture, I can see where you're coming from. Between used games, piracy of all kinds, and whatever we already have in our collections, there are a lot of ways to enjoy Nintendo games without forking over the full price for a Switch and the latest installment of whatever series.

But even with all of these elements in play, the Switch and its games have flown off the shelves for years now. So what is the actual benefit of specifically closing off 3DS hacking, arguably one of the more niche and challenging ways to get and play games?

@RupeeClock You think that the existence of older installments is a significant threat to sales of the newer ones? Considering how well Tears of the Kingdom is doing (despite looking a lot like BotW), I'm thinking that any series that's had a generational leap recently (3DS to Switch) should be especially safe!

Between that and the obvious fact that there are tons of ways to... "acquire" old 3DS or Virtual Console games without hacking a 3DS, Nintendo would have to be hopelessly delusional and paranoid to actually think this update helps their business in any meaningful way.

Oh...

@LunarFlame17 One final middle finger to the fans, apparently.

@RetroGames By default, solutions like this will just give you a crisp 480p, upscaled to a higher res for your TV (as opposed to the smeared mess that you'd likely get if you plugged the composite cables in directly).
However, many games have been modded to natively run in HD, and I hear that the performance hit is minimal in some of them. This adapter would be a great way to take advantage of that.

EDIT: Also, some OG Xbox games already support HD natively (no mods needed), but Halo isn't one of them.

@Serpenterror That still wouldn't make it legal, strictly speaking...

And Nintendo would still see this stuff as a threat, somehow. Like people aren't going to pay for an NSO sub to play Zelda, if they have access to the Spaceworld build? Or maybe it's that seeing WIP builds will undermine people's perception of Nintendo quality (not as if anything they made in the Wii era could already do that)!

While I expect that Stamper has already dumped these carts privately, I do wish he'd release them- though he's kind of blocked that option off by revealing that he has all of these.

@N64-ROX I know this isn't Digital Foundry, but it would have been nice to see a few examples of games that worked well, and a few that were too slow. As it is, performance is barely mentioned.

@-wc- You know what they say: "It takes money to find money!"
...er, something like that, anyway.

Always glad to see classic games being brought to more platforms!

Still frustrating to see so many games do Switch/PS4 only (I can understand skipping Xbox, but PC?), but at least there will be two options now, instead of just one.

Isn't the price a bargain for this level of performance? Hard to say without knowing which games do or don't run well, but it's pretty impressive if this can handle a typical GC, Wii, or PS2 game at full speed. (I wouldn't expect a locked 60fps in the Rogue Squadron games, of course.)