Azathoth

City Connection is a small company, if they had any sense they'd collaborate with fans like this and issue a proper Rushing Beat collection. It would do nothing but strengthen their IP, maybe even shine a spotlight and move a couple units of their newest release.

Looks like fans have done the work already, put these guys on the payroll and make some money.

Where was all this outrage when Piko put out Water Margin and the rest of those Taiwanese Mega Drive games on every console and handheld on the market?

"to celebrate the legacy of Zool with taste and restraint"... as opposed to the opposite? Is the packaging of reissued c-tier retro games often made distastefully and just balls to the wall unhinged?

"while still delivering the sense of occasion" do words even mean anything anymore?

Releasing a Japanese strategy/RPG with no English translation at all on Western storefronts is one of the craziest financial decisions I've seen a company make, especially when an English version already exists and could be included if they would just pay for the license. I'm sure that will lead to a lot of refund requests and bad reviews.

I loved the Genesis version of Master of Monsters, and this is from a guy that dislikes anything related to strategy games or RPGs. I didn't put a whole lot of time in the PlayStation version, but it's pretty bad in comparison. Besides the horrible load times it's completely broken by being able to move your master anywhere on the map. That lets you easily steamroll through all your opponents followed up by the game crashing when your master hits level 99.

I noticed the forums had been down this past week and feared something like this would happen, I'm genuinely sad to see that place go. DP was the first forum I registered at after all the Usenet groups I followed started to fizzle out around 2001 or so. The forums hadn't been very active the past couple years (as with almost all forums) but the amount of information lost here by nuking the whole thing is absolutely huge. Maybe not quite as much tech info as when Assembler went down, but definitely a comparable amount.

I never once saw anything posted about fundraisers or donations to keep the lights on. If anything like that was ever discussed it was not publicly mentioned. I'm sure the handful of us active members still left would have happily foot the bill to keep the place going.

"Is this officially licensed by SNK?" was such a frequently asked question that it garnered the #1 spot in this video. I'm glad they cleared that up, every comment section on social media is clogged with people stumped by that.

Sega delisted a ton of their classic titles from various storefronts, stated they "weren't a classic game company", and made that revival announcement 3 years ago yet have done nothing with it other than the new Shinobi game from a Western developer.

I think it's time to accept it's just all downhill from here. If it's not Yakuza or Sonic nobody there cares. Everything of note that we've gotten in the past dozen years or so, whether it's good (SoR4, Alex Kidd, Shinobi, Wonderboy) or lukewarm (HotD & PD remakes) are all farmed out to Western developers that approached Sega first for the license. If it wasn't for them reaching out and taking the initiative Sega would have done nothing with those IPs. The only thing I can recall them doing is the Switch exclusive Sega Ages line, all of which eventually petered out with no more releases, no alternative platforms, and even some of those have already been delisted.

As a massive Sega fan I didn't realize how great I had it during the 360 era. Sega released tons of great stuff from their back catalog, absolute bangers of repackaged or remastered games from their past and leaned heavily into their roots with new stuff like Sega Superstars Tennis and Sonic Racing. After releasing Transformed, a fantastic game that could hold it's own even against the almighty Mario Kart 8, in typical Sega fashion they trip over their own feet and fumble at the finish line.

@Sketcz I've owned the four volumes of your books since they were first released and have enjoyed them immensely. This "scene" seems like a small tight knit community of people that I assumed would support each other since nobody seems to be getting filthy rich off of it. You'd think one would be more than happy to buy their own copies of reference books, especially when making videos that rely on information gathered by other struggling independent authors, but I guess that may be too much to ask of some people.

As a game player I think we dodged a bullet on this one. The home ports by Probe and Sculptured weren't exactly fantastic but I think they're leaps and bounds above anything Software Creations could have put together.

Several people express the opinion that playing an AI coded game is morally wrong, since it is trained from sources that are considered "stolen" where the original creators receive no credit or compensation for their work.

No qualm about pirating Animal Crossing and denying credit or compensation to the companies, artists, and creators of the original game though?

It's been edited out of Takuma's Art of Fighting 2 stage in both the Arcade Archives version and it's photo in the gallery of Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves.

"the somewhat unfortunately titled SlaveDriver engine"

@Bod2019 In no way is Final Vendetta worth $650 USD. Beat 'em ups are my favorite genre, it's a great entry and I have no regrets about paying the $30 price tag at release. I enjoy the game enough I'd even be willing to drop a few bucks more if they sold that NG-exclusive playable enemy character as DLC. Saying that, paying $650 just for the prestige of having this on an AES cart is just foolishness IMO.

I think people are vastly overestimating the number of physical MD carts this game will actually move. Couple that in with the amount of overhead required for manufacturing and all the middlemen getting a cut and IMO they'd probably make more in one day on the Switch eShop then the entire run of MD carts. If I'm wrong I'd love to see the numbers to prove it.

Also, I don't really understand the vitriol by people that only want a ROM file. "I'd gladly support them by buying just a ROM file, but I can't so to hell with them and I'm not giving them one red cent." Well, pay your $20 on Steam then play the ROM that's easily obtainable. At this point it's very easy to discern between people that feel entitled to everything for free and people that genuinely want to support a game.

I'm shocked they could actually manage to track down the licenses for all these characters. I thought for sure they'd have to edit a few of them out, especially with some of them appearing in other current or upcoming wrestling games.

Was renting GB games really a common thing? I saw a grand total of 1 store that ever rented GB games, and even then it was just a handful of early launch window titles.

@Lup The best version of Outrun available is on Switch

How can it be called "worst reviewed" if Halverson devoted 8 pages to it in GameFan?

This strikes me as much ado about nothing on both sides. If everything fell flat on its face right now, what would change? Hyperfocus loses the ability to use the dead AKI logo in game or advertising, and they change AKI-man's name to AK!-man and put an extra stripe in his outfit. Viola. There's no N64 assets and code being used, there's nothing skirting copyright in any way.

It's no different than AEW hoping the THQ name would have some retro appeal to look legit and sell more copies.

Hamster's YouTube video seems to show the English version of the game is included in this release, was it ever explained why the newest Taito collection only uses the Japanese version?

Anett Again/Returns is a genuinely horrible game. Don't be fooled by its exotic origins, it looks and plays like a dev team making a zero budget MD launch title.

I think the debate about it using software emulation versus FPGA is probably giving it a little too much credit. There's a very good possibility this thing is using the same globtop clone chips we've seen in a hundred other consoles and portables over the years.

War Machine was always a head scratcher. Why would Marvel not want Iron Man used, yet be ok with him before in MSH and after in MvC2?

A Switch but no PS4 release? I didn't really expect it on any Xbox platform but going straight to PS5 is a bit odd.

@Zeebor15 G-Mode or whoever the company is that owns the corpse of Data East isn't too discriminating on who they license their IP out to. They've had Karate Champ on a ton of those rubbish My Arcade minis/handhelds, and gave Fighter's History (and Night Slasher) to whoever the scheisters were at Flying Tiger. They also did a Fighter's History SNES multi-cart with Retrobit. They'd let you make Karate Champ dog turd baggies as long as you fork over that fee.

I have zero desire to own a Polymega and will never own one, but I gotta admit this is the way a collection should be put out. Every version on every platform that is feasible by the license. I'm a fan of Fighter's History, seeing them include both US & JP releases along with the NGCD and Saturn ports is not something I would have ever expected to see. That's the way a collection should be presented and I think they deserve some praise for that.

If they had any sense they'd format these collections in a way that it could play on a PC that way they're not limiting their buyers to such a tiny audience. I'd pay 40 bucks to buy that for PC if it was nicely packaged, even though emulating this stuff for free is one click away.

I know they're completely unrelated, but seeing this gives me hope for an AA release of Spinal Breakers. "Cabal clones" is a woefully underrepresented genre.

As a casual shmup fan who enjoys older, more forgiving titles and just can't get into bullet hell entries, the whole Aerofighters series is a treat. Short, bite sized levels combined with having a ton of different ships really scratches that fast paced arcade itch. IMO a great series for a more relaxed shooter experience.

@Sketcz I never quite understood why PS and PS2 bootleggers never made the jump to self-booting discs. They obviously have the tech as evidenced by all the grey-market bootable discs that are available, yet they never bothered to implement it when making copies of commercial games. Strange!

Bleem! was truly amazing at the time. 100% fullspeed emulation with amazing resolution upgrades on a competitor's console is something that's just mind melting, as was emulating a current-gen console on a low end PC of the day.

Plus it actually being a useable, legal, commercial release and not some homebrew effort is something just totally alien in todays market. Walking into Babbage's and plonking down $5 each for the 3 bleemcast discs, then finding out they not only work with my US versions but also the imports (or CD-Rs) was a good time.

The gameplay changes WD made for the Sega CD versions hasn't appeared in any of the half dozen rereleases of Lunar, right? Seems like a pretty extreme leap to assume that just because a song sounds similar that the entire magic system and Bill Clinton puns will be included.

This article only lists the Arcade Archives titles. Almost every KoF entry on all platforms are on sale. 13, 14, 15, 98UM, 02UM, DLC characters; there's a whole lot not listed here.

@KingMike That was my first thought also. Seems like if you purchased the rights to these console ports, it would be useless without a fee also to the original IP holder. You could technically purchase one without the other, but it would be completely useless.

This was publicly advertised on eBay, probably the biggest marketplace a regular Joe can access. First person with access to eBay and the cash could have walked away with it.

No successful crowd funding efforts. No "archival foundation or museum" rallied to the cause with cash in hand. Where the rubber meets the road nobody cared enough. The cries of preservation and free downloads far outweigh the offers to financially back such efforts.

This is the same release that had that trigger warning about it exhibiting "2003 standards" for fear of offending the public.

In today's hypercharged political environment I'd expect nothing less. Every game is one waterhead Twitter user or deranged Kotaku article away from being crucified and a small publisher can't afford a PR nightmare.

Apparently there's no cross play either, so I'm sure the online community will thrive for years to come.

Why the hell remove the two pics from the JP Punisher ending? Why not use the updated 360/PS3 port of MvC2 rather than straight Naomi emulation?

I always assumed Edward Randy was lost to license purgatory after G-Mode and the rest carved up the corpse of Data East. Awesome to actually see it get released in some format! Hopefully the Evercade hardware is able to emulate it correctly.

Not being able to remap buttons in a 6 button fighter is criminal, almost as bad as not being able to access dipswitch settings. I hope Fighter's History shows up somewhere else eventually.

Nice to see they put Warbirds back in after that last update that removed it

> This is nothing! This is crap, an inconsequential unintentional bug, just an excuse for Sega fanboys to use in outdated console wars arguments! Grow up!

> Proceed to write e-novel post about how SNES version is superior

When first announced Evercade said the two PlayStation games would have "modernized" control improvements as a selling point, and not straight 1:1 emulation.

So what's changed?

I adore the original. That being said, this looks like a 2008 Adobe Flash game you play in a web browser. Flat, cheap, boring.. all of that.

I think they should have left the player and enemy sprites the exact same and just changed up the background and wall visuals. You can update visuals without looking like a circa 2008 flash game.

Not sure exactly how this is gonna play either. Changing this to a dual stick shooter makes a huge difference, making it play vastly different from the original.

Man I absolutely can't wait till they crack this thing wide open, it's like my #1 first priority and every discussion about the 2600+ should involve it in some way.

I'll go wild and spend $200 and my entire evening installing CFW, load up the entire set and... emulate ROMs with Stella on a low-end chipset like I can right now a million other ways for free.

$500 deluxe faux-arcade cabinet full of 2600 games. That's a pretty niche audience to shoot for.

Back when Sega first announced they were bringing these out in the West on the eShop, that was what made me pick up a 3DS. These are such fantastic and unique ports of these games that we will never have in another form.

Fantastic article.

It can't be underestimated the amount of SNES Game Genies that were sold in the States after EGM printed it's infamous Street Fighter II "boss code".

One of the main things that stuck out about GF to me, during the 16-bit era at least, was they were not afraid to call a spade a spade. They were the first US-based print magazine I ever read that would trash a legitimately poor game. Gamepro, EGM, and Nintendo Power would write an entire single page review of a crappy game, glossing over or barely mentioning bad points, and leave only a lackluster final review score as an indication of low quality.

Gamefan didn't care to comedically trash a game, and was written how a normal game player would talk to another, not like a PR driven doublespeak robot to avoid losing advertising revenue.