Yeah you know, maybe releasing one of these every ten minutes and making a lot of them look just like highly celebrated best selling units from a notoriously litigious & well connected company with the brand power of Disney wasn't the best idea. Not giving a toss about them being preloaded with roms is just the extra stupid sugar on top in goading a response like this.
People already play absolute garbage on their phones and quite often pay for the pleasure or deal with an egregious amount of ads, when a cheap handheld software emulator has access to a multitude of libraries containing the stone cold classics with no further costs or ads. Same with people who play console games on their phones. They're the same who will probably love this slurry and won't care about how it was created because one of the products will tickle them just right.
Toothpaste isn't going back in the tube. May as well let the hogs have their trough. I'll be hunkered down with all my antiques.
I love my vita, it's one incredible powerhouse of a portable unit and I'm glad they made it the way they did. But they made the same mistake, twice, that Sega and Atari made. Handhelds moved on low cost and approachable games. Trying to beat Nintendo with sheer power & hardcore gaming content never worked in this arena.
This is kind of like the divide of the just wanna play all the games crowd and people who care about accuracy in emulation. The Analogue Pocket is highlighting this lately, because a bunch of ai coded cores are showing up now. A good many of them don't run right, or like the CD-i core, don't run at all.
People are either in the side of I don't care I just want all the cores, or I bought this device because of the high standard of hardware emulation.
It seems to be an unmovable divide in gamers. And it looks like one we'll be butting heads on until the end of time now. Ethics of AI aside, that is what this conflict comes down to. People who don't care give me all the de/recomps and people who want quality.
This would be great if Nintendo hadn't done such a good job putting useful info on the bottom and creating a good playing field in the top. It's only weird now going back from modern titles, it played perfectly fine.
New Messiah is such an all timer for killer tunes to open up a new journey while making the hero so awesome. Which is probably why Belmont's Curse gave a super limp first impression. The wildly awesome opener is a series tradition, and this supposed new beginning has such a decent yet wholly lame tune to start things off.
Also a shame that more Castlevania games didn't have the stage selection with multiple castles like this and Order of Ecclesia.
Whoa, a whole 3 cities? Don't strain yourselves Konami. And no involvement from any of the original composers? I'm sure the Undertale symphony guy will do alright on arrangements but a show like this would have been the time to do something really special like what Mitsuda did for Chrono Cross. What will probably be yet another Video Games Live-esque performance is kind of lame.
Kind of funny, because they're doing what Nintendo has done in the past by grabbing up some cheap readily available hardware and repurposing it. But that works for Nintendo because they maximize the hardware and develop exclusive great games for it. That trick doesn't work so well for emulation devices lol
Geez. Konami isn't completely inept for a hot minute and suddenly everyone is thinking they are the best guys who are going to pull out a collection of this magnitude. Gamers have that goldfish memory.
Yeah nothing makes me stop caring about things like a big flood of content. Like the decomps subreddit is awash with these things and it has become a rush of novelty. That's before getting to the actual content which is usually a big messy heap of code that no one in their right mind will ever want to touch or build upon. It salts the earth in a way because it will never be improved on and no one else will probably attempt doing it with cleaner code.
And half the enjoyment for me on these type of projects is the journey, the passion which drove someone to spend their free time chasing a dream. Someone hitting the easy button and brute forcing out one of these projects just because they can is dreadfully boring; the same weight of achievement as a conceptual rendering.
My kids like to play with the demo unit at Target. Funny that my decades old Wii and slightly less ancient Kinect is the 'we have that at home' now. No way I would be buying into a console and getting on the hook for a subscription when those consoles still exist and games are dirt cheap or can be procured otherwise - games that we can look at and freely choose rather than being at the whim of whatever Nex decides we're getting.
And they have a blast. Wii fit, Link's Crossbow Training and Kinect Adventures have been huge hits.
Great read. One of the incredibly small few who seemed like the real deal. It still stings knowing Robin Williams is gone, these damn commercials got to me right from the start.
AI can help in some spots and not be a detriment. Translating from Japanese is not one of them. There's absolutely an art to localizing, as so much is up to the interpretation of the translator. Certain things simply don't exist in one language or the other and so much will make less sense or no sense if the translator lacks a strong understanding of both languages. Lots of fan translations are trash for the same reason, it's the difference between Neil Cortlett's Seiken Densetsu 3 and the horrendous Final Fantasy 4 j2e.
AI will get you by doing some menus and instructions. For dialogue though, absolutely not. I would never bother to invest any time in a text heavy translation done by an inexperienced translator or AI.
That's cool to see. Sign of the times though that nothing can be taken as authentic at first glance.
Shame about the mega embarrassing text with it. Late stage capitalist blah de blah is a cluck of the chicken from the same braindead beak as ai slop. Frankly it lends weight to this being doctored in some manner since they're clearly looking for a vessel to deliver that shockingly original upvote mongering message.
Yeah that seemed way too aggressive for the launch date. No way would I ever put that much money in a preorder, even for one of the bigger proven companies and this is Plaion.
@RadioShadow they're less aggressive by comparison because they have less to lose than Capcom or Nintendo, but Sega absolutely has shut down some fan projects, notably the Streets of Rage remake which was in development for 8 years. They've picked up some reputation as the nice guys since Sonic Mania, but even that's a distortion of the truth because Sega commissioned that game, and Taxman worked with them on previous ports, it wasn't a fan game that got a blessing from Sega.
Just a slight drop of the heart with that title and image, haha.
I had a similar introduction to his music, renting Final Fantasy II (IV) on New Year's Eve. I instantly recognized the prelude as that mysterious beautiful tune which played after the fight with Culex in Super Mario RPG (I was definitely a latecomer to Final Fantasy in the 90s). And then the faded in theme of the Red Wings had me glued. I'd played games with great music but nothing grabbed me like this soundtrack.
Over time I've recognized that it comes from his ability to pull influences from varying sources and filter them into his ideal soundscape. VII having notable pulls from Pink Floyd and Metallica is like significant chunks of my childhood music journey stitched together in a profound way. Being a self taught musician meant he wasn't held to the strict training and upbringing and that gives his stuff that looser, almost rough feel compared to a lot of others in the genre (though I equally love and respect the classically trained vgm composers who fused in their love of the forbidden rock & roll).
I very briefly met the man in 2009 on the Distant Worlds tour and he definitely strikes as someone incredibly grateful for his following. Seeing him on stage in the chorus during One-Winged Angel has to be one of the coolest moments I've experienced as a gamer.
I have lifelong love for Nintendo consoles and games but I also have no delusions about this relationship I have with the giant old company. They want my money. They sell me things I find entertaining. They're not my buddy, they're not my pal. They have been around as long as they have because they are good at parting people from their cash at a high profit margin. I don't expect them to ever do anything to my benefit except when they're desperately on the ropes as during the Wii U times.
Cool on Playdate, but being a nice guy is a guaranteed way to never last as long as Nintendo in the world of business.
I used to balk at the tiny displays of the micro and similar units, but I've recently been playing with the Zelda Game and Watch, and after completing a run of Link's Awakening, I get it. It has been super nice just having that tiny weightless portable in my pocket for quick bursts of gameplay with only a few games to choose from.
A Micro is way too expensive these days to justify picking one up but I may look into modding one of the G&W units after I work through the other Zelda games.
Part of the motivation to get a home security system for me was having door/window alarms and a motion sensor over my home office where I have all my video games, albums, amiibo, laserdiscs, etc. You never know who might tell someone who tells someone who tells someone about the big game collection they saw.
I feel for him. I've always thought if I lose mine to fire or otherwise I would definitely never attempt to reacquire any of it.
Pleasantly surprised it doesn't look like trash as with the FF Pixel Remasters and doesn't look to have a bunch of unnecessary crap jammed in like voiceovers. It's just the game with gentle enhancements and that's all it ever needed.
SBC device consumers are a special breed of gluttonous. This company has pretty obviously always been scummy and is looking for ways to squeeze their whales. They got a little greedy this time around but in the long run it won't matter.
Like any shmup it takes learning the hit box and doing some memorization for the tricky areas through practice. But some people just aren't built for that type of gaming and it's less and less over time. The AVGN effect is interesting, it's kind of like when merlot sales were impacted by the movie Sideways when Paul Giamatti's character rants about never drinking it (and the reason why is left out of the movie adaptation). People are stupidly impressionable.
This is where the divide between people who just want to play all the games and those who notice every little inaccuracy comes to a head. I have Analogue consoles and a mister because it will drive me mad when the sfx for earthworm jim 2 is slightly off as it is in every software emulator I've ever used. That's why I paid a premium for the Super NT (along with enjoying the old plug & play setup).
So when these cores like the Pocket's Mega CD start showing up with issues but people celebrate anyway because it means more of all the games, I want no part of it. Regardless of how they are made, I'm in this for quality not quantity. What I've seen so far, people who have no idea how to properly develop and document a core are using AI to brute force a messy solution, and they're going to be folded in with the quality cores. Jog on with that.
And Jotego is absolutely right that it drives away talent. FPGA development is highly lucrative and in demand, and not an easy skill to learn by any stretch. Someone doing this for free or pocket change probably isn't going to bother when someone has already shat out an AI core which is pretty okay in the eyes of the 'just wanna play all the games' bros. But I don't expect typical gamers to be able to see five feet in front of them when they're too busy stuffing their face with the freebies they howl for.
The one way Squeenix will get my money again for Final Fantasy is the one thing they are entirely averse to: rerelease the original versions. I would have thrown my money at the Pixel remasters if they included the original versions and ports. Same with Dragon Quest for that matter, they port the horrendous mobile versions and release overcooked remakes at full price, never the original or GBC versions.
I'm sure a Final Fantasy VI remake would have six hours of bloated dialogue and mini games in Narshe before the esper vaporizes the soldiers. Cyan would scream to the heavens and pound his fists and cut down trees with his sword in a ten minute cutscene after seeing his family departing on the ghost train. Zozo will have some hamfisted political commentary explaining why it's a city of thieves. Kefka would show up every ten minutes in the world of ruin to taunt the party and there would probably be time travel or a multiverse of worlds of ruin or some other nonsense. And it'll probably happen, people are constantly frothing at the mouth for it and Squeenix likes money.
I'm sure you'll be interested to know this was AI coded through Claude and the guy who did it admits the code is a snaggled mess as a result. The guy doesn't know any Verilog and didn't develop anything himself. The GitHub has a disclaimer. https://github.com/neutralinsomniac/openfpga-megacd
Same with the Pico 8 core which was recently shown in the pocket subreddit, 100% ai coded.
I remember Daddyofive was super excited to show off his supaboy on a game room tour video, which probably says everything about who these were made for. These things were junk back then and it looks like nothing has changed including that embarrassing name.
Nice. I still prefer to play on the Super NT vs the Pocket docked but this could change that. Pretty wild to see lately how much these talented devs are squeezing into the Pocket's hardware. The ports of Hexen, Doom, Diablo, Heretic, and Duke Nukem 3D are really impressive, imperfect as they may be.
@WileyDragonfly glad to say I don't have a single one of these things. But there's people like some residents of r/sbcgaming who proudly make up for people like me ten times over.
Comments at the top nailed it. Those are the hard truths no one wants to face. Games are a nice distraction from this being an ugly world. GDQ is pretty lame these days anyway but at least archives exist for when the runs used to be interesting and entertaining.
And people say Analogue sells in too small of batches. Perfect device for people that always wanted to play games on an OG NES controller. Regardless of that it'll sell though, there's a whole collective of people who compulsively buy up every SBG device they can get their hands on.
I stopped buying physical on PlayStation and Xbox a while ago. The discs never have the full game and you have to wait for a long while to download and install it anyway, what's the point? Resell prices are so laughably low, I don't care about getting some pocket change for a mostly useless disc which absolutely is not a preserved copy of a game like the old days.
Switch games have the day one patch crap too (I recall PC Gamer saying way back in 1998 that release n patch would become the norm if people didn't complain enough), but at least it's almost plug & play. Nintendo could definitely expand their unique market if they stick with the carts, and play up their intent to offer that option. It would be hilarious if Sony handed up yet another win to the big N especially with how people are totally losing their minds over this.
As if the industry wasn't obviously moving in this direction for like 15 years. The fight needed to be back then, when digital first became a widespread option on all consoles for more than just small titles. A drop in the bucket boycotting GTA 6 will do absolutely nothing now.
As if the world needed yet another one of these devices anyway.
Preloaded devices baffle me. It's unbelievably easy in 2026 to get entire libraries of roms downloaded. Why even risk courting Nintendo's legal arm? But then people are selling loaded sd cards too, so maybe doing a quick search is just too much black magic for some.
Yeah it's a shame Romero is always dragged through the dirt over Daikatana and Ion Storm. Obviously he made some bad calls and should have been better about making promises & saying no to things, but his contributions to gaming far outweigh those blunders. Gaming will only continue to become more corporate and a proxy battleground for culture wars; we need people like him representing gamers on the bigger stages.
They're going to keep doing this because they know eventually most people will get tired of the complaining & won't care anymore and/or the tech will rapidly improve until most people can't tell the difference.
You probably should come up with a term other than slop. Constantly braying and bleating the same phrase drives fatigue.
This guy is such a clown. He and his crappy company have been salting that earth for years by putting out some shoddy products, doing overpriced rereleases of readily available mid tier (or even garbage tier) games, and in general driving the sentiment that these companies are grifty: monetizing fomo and encouraging the idea of physical games as an investment. Doing anything boutique is always a risk, but it's especially tough on this industry now specifically because of LRG. Dude needs to jog on.
The Analogue Pocket has been getting some interesting cores lately for PC games. Diablo, Heretic, Duke Nukem, Wolf3d, etc. which should be exciting. But they're all off with glitches (especially on automaps), subpar music, and in Diablo's case pretty much dogshit with an atrocious framerate. Makes me wonder how many of these are vibe coded. Perfect accuracy is the dream but the whole idea is to be as close to accurate as possible. There's a billion software emulation devices running these games under good enough conditions. If the quality becomes similarly inconsistent on the fpga cores, why even bother making them when they can be software emulated anywhere else
Glad they picked a good version to do this with and not the dogcrap psp/ps4 version. Buggy, boring new voice acting, and maybe most egregious a terrible sound to music balance which can't be adjusted. I can't believe they didn't get more flack for treating such a legendary game so poorly.
I've put so many hours into the oled vita. It's an absolute powerhouse of a handheld and I'm glad they didn't skip out on any components or bells & whistles. That's why it's still a joy to play today and is head and shoulders over the endless deluge of cheap emulation handhelds.
The cost of required expansive memory + no onboard memory on the original model coupled with lack of game support is what killed it. All that other stuff wouldn't even approach dealbreaking for gamers if they weren't forced to buy an expensive memory card for digital content and if they had plenty of choices for great games to make that purchase worth it
Haha. Options for digging up old companies and zombifying them must getting pretty slim if 3DO is on the block. Can't wait to see what crap they try to sling under the nostalgic banner.
People spend wild amounts of money to listen to music in the most inconvenient ways. People shell out for expensive hardware so they can play games on similarly pricey old dumb tvs. Said people would probably kneejerk at these assessments to explain why that's different and worth the investment. Point is, there's no shortage of enthusiasts for boutique/niche stuff like this. Just because it's not one person's jam doesn't mean it's pointless.
Can never get enough of this classic. Last year it was the Vita port, now doing the Analogue pocket version docked and portable. I'll have to load this up on the Pocket now too.
My kids were having a blast with the store unit. I might have considered it until I saw it's a subscription based console. I'm so sick of that being the norm on every kids entertainment source. They know what they're doing. So I pulled out the wii U and my kids are now having a blast with the vwii.
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Re: Taki Udon Shares Footage Of FPGA SP Handheld Console That Plays Original Game Boy Advance Carts
@Banksie no he has to obviously do exactly what I want at all times, lol. I'm just giving an opinon and I'm a nobody in a comment box, take a breath.
Re: Taki Udon Shares Footage Of FPGA SP Handheld Console That Plays Original Game Boy Advance Carts
Very cool, but this dude seriously needs to knuckle down and focus on one project at a time.
Re: Entertainment Software Association Requests U.S. Trade Investigate Anbernic's 'Superfake' Handheld Emulator Market
Yeah you know, maybe releasing one of these every ten minutes and making a lot of them look just like highly celebrated best selling units from a notoriously litigious & well connected company with the brand power of Disney wasn't the best idea. Not giving a toss about them being preloaded with roms is just the extra stupid sugar on top in goading a response like this.
Re: Antstream Is Creating An AI-Powered Brain Rot Gaming Platform, And 'Mr Antichrist' Peter Thiel Is A Backer
People already play absolute garbage on their phones and quite often pay for the pleasure or deal with an egregious amount of ads, when a cheap handheld software emulator has access to a multitude of libraries containing the stone cold classics with no further costs or ads. Same with people who play console games on their phones. They're the same who will probably love this slurry and won't care about how it was created because one of the products will tickle them just right.
Toothpaste isn't going back in the tube. May as well let the hogs have their trough. I'll be hunkered down with all my antiques.
Re: "You Bastards" - Ex-PlayStation Exec Shawn Layden Reveals What A Nintendo Counterpart Thought About PSP
I love my vita, it's one incredible powerhouse of a portable unit and I'm glad they made it the way they did. But they made the same mistake, twice, that Sega and Atari made. Handhelds moved on low cost and approachable games. Trying to beat Nintendo with sheer power & hardcore gaming content never worked in this arena.
Re: Feature: "It's Insulting & Hurtful" - Beetle Adventure Racing Decomp Dev Kicks Back Against The Rise Of AI Recomps
This is kind of like the divide of the just wanna play all the games crowd and people who care about accuracy in emulation. The Analogue Pocket is highlighting this lately, because a bunch of ai coded cores are showing up now. A good many of them don't run right, or like the CD-i core, don't run at all.
People are either in the side of I don't care I just want all the cores, or I bought this device because of the high standard of hardware emulation.
It seems to be an unmovable divide in gamers. And it looks like one we'll be butting heads on until the end of time now. Ethics of AI aside, that is what this conflict comes down to. People who don't care give me all the de/recomps and people who want quality.
Re: This Super Mario Kart ROM Hack Removes the Game's Annoying Single-Player Shortcoming
This would be great if Nintendo hadn't done such a good job putting useful info on the bottom and creating a good playing field in the top. It's only weird now going back from modern titles, it played perfectly fine.
Re: Game Changer: Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge - Where My Love For Konami's Legendary Series Began
New Messiah is such an all timer for killer tunes to open up a new journey while making the hero so awesome. Which is probably why Belmont's Curse gave a super limp first impression. The wildly awesome opener is a series tradition, and this supposed new beginning has such a decent yet wholly lame tune to start things off.
Also a shame that more Castlevania games didn't have the stage selection with multiple castles like this and Order of Ecclesia.
Re: Castlevania 40th Anniversary Orchestral Concerts To Take Place Next Year Across Three Major Cities
Whoa, a whole 3 cities? Don't strain yourselves Konami. And no involvement from any of the original composers? I'm sure the Undertale symphony guy will do alright on arrangements but a show like this would have been the time to do something really special like what Mitsuda did for Chrono Cross. What will probably be yet another Video Games Live-esque performance is kind of lame.
Re: Turns Out The Chipset Inside The Retroid Duo Can Handle Two Screens Natively
Kind of funny, because they're doing what Nintendo has done in the past by grabbing up some cheap readily available hardware and repurposing it. But that works for Nintendo because they maximize the hardware and develop exclusive great games for it. That trick doesn't work so well for emulation devices lol
Re: A New Castlevania 40th Anniversary Video Has Released, & Fans Think They Have Spotted A Tease For A 3D Collection
Geez. Konami isn't completely inept for a hot minute and suddenly everyone is thinking they are the best guys who are going to pull out a collection of this magnitude. Gamers have that goldfish memory.
Re: "It Trivialises The Hobby" - GoldenEye Running On SNES Triggers More Debate Over Vibe-Coded Retro Projects
Yeah nothing makes me stop caring about things like a big flood of content. Like the decomps subreddit is awash with these things and it has become a rush of novelty. That's before getting to the actual content which is usually a big messy heap of code that no one in their right mind will ever want to touch or build upon. It salts the earth in a way because it will never be improved on and no one else will probably attempt doing it with cleaner code.
And half the enjoyment for me on these type of projects is the journey, the passion which drove someone to spend their free time chasing a dream. Someone hitting the easy button and brute forcing out one of these projects just because they can is dreadfully boring; the same weight of achievement as a conceptual rendering.
Re: Nintendo Wii And Kinect Games Could Have A Second Life Thanks To This Cube-Like Console
My kids like to play with the demo unit at Target. Funny that my decades old Wii and slightly less ancient Kinect is the 'we have that at home' now. No way I would be buying into a console and getting on the hook for a subscription when those consoles still exist and games are dirt cheap or can be procured otherwise - games that we can look at and freely choose rather than being at the whim of whatever Nex decides we're getting.
And they have a blast. Wii fit, Link's Crossbow Training and Kinect Adventures have been huge hits.
Re: "He Used To Call Me 'Boss'" - Director Of Robin Williams' Iconic Zelda Ads Remembers The Famous Actor & Comedian, 15 Years Later
Great read. One of the incredibly small few who seemed like the real deal. It still stings knowing Robin Williams is gone, these damn commercials got to me right from the start.
Re: A Second English Translation For Sega CD Shadowrun Appears, And It's Also AI-Assisted
AI can help in some spots and not be a detriment. Translating from Japanese is not one of them. There's absolutely an art to localizing, as so much is up to the interpretation of the translator. Certain things simply don't exist in one language or the other and so much will make less sense or no sense if the translator lacks a strong understanding of both languages. Lots of fan translations are trash for the same reason, it's the difference between Neil Cortlett's Seiken Densetsu 3 and the horrendous Final Fantasy 4 j2e.
AI will get you by doing some menus and instructions. For dialogue though, absolutely not. I would never bother to invest any time in a text heavy translation done by an inexperienced translator or AI.
Re: "Let's Get The Last Beautiful Things Hiding On Our Hard Drives Out There" - Project Dream, Rare's Unreleased Banjo-Kazooie Predecessor, Leaks Online
That's cool to see. Sign of the times though that nothing can be taken as authentic at first glance.
Shame about the mega embarrassing text with it. Late stage capitalist blah de blah is a cluck of the chicken from the same braindead beak as ai slop. Frankly it lends weight to this being doctored in some manner since they're clearly looking for a vessel to deliver that shockingly original upvote mongering message.
Re: "We're Genuinely Sorry" - The Neo Geo AES+ Has Been Delayed
Yeah that seemed way too aggressive for the launch date. No way would I ever put that much money in a preorder, even for one of the bigger proven companies and this is Plaion.
Re: 'Sega VS Capcom' Fan Project Shut Down For "Using Capcom's Characters & Likeness"
@RadioShadow they're less aggressive by comparison because they have less to lose than Capcom or Nintendo, but Sega absolutely has shut down some fan projects, notably the Streets of Rage remake which was in development for 8 years. They've picked up some reputation as the nice guys since Sonic Mania, but even that's a distortion of the truth because Sega commissioned that game, and Taxman worked with them on previous ports, it wasn't a fan game that got a blessing from Sega.
Re: Feature: "He Is Truly One Of A Kind" - A Celebration Of Nobuo Uematsu, The Maestro Of Video Game Music
Just a slight drop of the heart with that title and image, haha.
I had a similar introduction to his music, renting Final Fantasy II (IV) on New Year's Eve. I instantly recognized the prelude as that mysterious beautiful tune which played after the fight with Culex in Super Mario RPG (I was definitely a latecomer to Final Fantasy in the 90s). And then the faded in theme of the Red Wings had me glued. I'd played games with great music but nothing grabbed me like this soundtrack.
Over time I've recognized that it comes from his ability to pull influences from varying sources and filter them into his ideal soundscape. VII having notable pulls from Pink Floyd and Metallica is like significant chunks of my childhood music journey stitched together in a profound way. Being a self taught musician meant he wasn't held to the strict training and upbringing and that gives his stuff that looser, almost rough feel compared to a lot of others in the genre (though I equally love and respect the classically trained vgm composers who fused in their love of the forbidden rock & roll).
I very briefly met the man in 2009 on the Distant Worlds tour and he definitely strikes as someone incredibly grateful for his following. Seeing him on stage in the chorus during One-Winged Angel has to be one of the coolest moments I've experienced as a gamer.
Re: Unlike Nintendo, Playdate Maker Panic Is Doing The Right Thing With Tariff Refunds
I have lifelong love for Nintendo consoles and games but I also have no delusions about this relationship I have with the giant old company. They want my money. They sell me things I find entertaining. They're not my buddy, they're not my pal. They have been around as long as they have because they are good at parting people from their cash at a high profit margin. I don't expect them to ever do anything to my benefit except when they're desperately on the ropes as during the Wii U times.
Cool on Playdate, but being a nice guy is a guaranteed way to never last as long as Nintendo in the world of business.
Re: Feature: 5 Things A Short Trip Taught Me About Nintendo's Smallest Game Boy
I used to balk at the tiny displays of the micro and similar units, but I've recently been playing with the Zelda Game and Watch, and after completing a run of Link's Awakening, I get it. It has been super nice just having that tiny weightless portable in my pocket for quick bursts of gameplay with only a few games to choose from.
A Micro is way too expensive these days to justify picking one up but I may look into modding one of the G&W units after I work through the other Zelda games.
Re: "I Don't Think I'll Collect Another Thing Again" - Prized NES Collection Of Over 860+ NES Games Stolen In Heartbreaking Burglary
Part of the motivation to get a home security system for me was having door/window alarms and a motion sensor over my home office where I have all my video games, albums, amiibo, laserdiscs, etc. You never know who might tell someone who tells someone who tells someone about the big game collection they saw.
I feel for him. I've always thought if I lose mine to fire or otherwise I would definitely never attempt to reacquire any of it.
Re: "This Moment Has Been Long Awaited" - Terranigma Is Coming To Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox And PC Early Next Year
Pleasantly surprised it doesn't look like trash as with the FF Pixel Remasters and doesn't look to have a bunch of unnecessary crap jammed in like voiceovers. It's just the game with gentle enhancements and that's all it ever needed.
Re: "Scummy As Hell" - AYANEO Reveals Another Colourway Of The GBA-Like Pocket Advance, Annoying Some Fans
SBC device consumers are a special breed of gluttonous. This company has pretty obviously always been scummy and is looking for ways to squeeze their whales. They got a little greedy this time around but in the long run it won't matter.
Re: This New NES Patch Overhauls One Of The Console's Most "Difficult" Games
Like any shmup it takes learning the hit box and doing some memorization for the tricky areas through practice. But some people just aren't built for that type of gaming and it's less and less over time. The AVGN effect is interesting, it's kind of like when merlot sales were impacted by the movie Sideways when Paul Giamatti's character rants about never drinking it (and the reason why is left out of the movie adaptation). People are stupidly impressionable.
Re: "You Might As Well Play On A Raspberry Pi" - The World Of MiSTer FPGA Remains Divided Over "AI Slop" Cores
This is where the divide between people who just want to play all the games and those who notice every little inaccuracy comes to a head. I have Analogue consoles and a mister because it will drive me mad when the sfx for earthworm jim 2 is slightly off as it is in every software emulator I've ever used. That's why I paid a premium for the Super NT (along with enjoying the old plug & play setup).
So when these cores like the Pocket's Mega CD start showing up with issues but people celebrate anyway because it means more of all the games, I want no part of it. Regardless of how they are made, I'm in this for quality not quantity. What I've seen so far, people who have no idea how to properly develop and document a core are using AI to brute force a messy solution, and they're going to be folded in with the quality cores. Jog on with that.
And Jotego is absolutely right that it drives away talent. FPGA development is highly lucrative and in demand, and not an easy skill to learn by any stretch. Someone doing this for free or pocket change probably isn't going to bother when someone has already shat out an AI core which is pretty okay in the eyes of the 'just wanna play all the games' bros. But I don't expect typical gamers to be able to see five feet in front of them when they're too busy stuffing their face with the freebies they howl for.
Re: "We'd Probably Have To Release Them In 4 Or 5 Instalments" - Final Fantasy XIV's Director On Why More Remakes Haven't Materialised
The one way Squeenix will get my money again for Final Fantasy is the one thing they are entirely averse to: rerelease the original versions. I would have thrown my money at the Pixel remasters if they included the original versions and ports. Same with Dragon Quest for that matter, they port the horrendous mobile versions and release overcooked remakes at full price, never the original or GBC versions.
I'm sure a Final Fantasy VI remake would have six hours of bloated dialogue and mini games in Narshe before the esper vaporizes the soldiers. Cyan would scream to the heavens and pound his fists and cut down trees with his sword in a ten minute cutscene after seeing his family departing on the ghost train. Zozo will have some hamfisted political commentary explaining why it's a city of thieves. Kefka would show up every ten minutes in the world of ruin to taunt the party and there would probably be time travel or a multiverse of worlds of ruin or some other nonsense. And it'll probably happen, people are constantly frothing at the mouth for it and Squeenix likes money.
Re: Sega CD Shown Running On The Analogue Pocket
I'm sure you'll be interested to know this was AI coded through Claude and the guy who did it admits the code is a snaggled mess as a result. The guy doesn't know any Verilog and didn't develop anything himself. The GitHub has a disclaimer. https://github.com/neutralinsomniac/openfpga-megacd
Same with the Pico 8 core which was recently shown in the pocket subreddit, 100% ai coded.
Re: Hyperkin Is Re-Releasing Its 15-Year-Old Portable SNES In Two New Designs
I remember Daddyofive was super excited to show off his supaboy on a game room tour video, which probably says everything about who these were made for. These things were junk back then and it looks like nothing has changed including that embarrassing name.
Re: SNES Save States Are Coming To Analogue Pocket
Nice. I still prefer to play on the Super NT vs the Pocket docked but this could change that. Pretty wild to see lately how much these talented devs are squeezing into the Pocket's hardware. The ports of Hexen, Doom, Diablo, Heretic, and Duke Nukem 3D are really impressive, imperfect as they may be.
Re: Look Familiar, Anyone? Here's Our First Image Of The KONKR Pocket Advance
@WileyDragonfly glad to say I don't have a single one of these things. But there's people like some residents of r/sbcgaming who proudly make up for people like me ten times over.
Re: "GDQ Is Committed To Supporting Human Rights & Inclusivity" - GDQ Cancels SNK-Sponsored Stream, After Significant Backlash
Comments at the top nailed it. Those are the hard truths no one wants to face. Games are a nice distraction from this being an ugly world. GDQ is pretty lame these days anyway but at least archives exist for when the runs used to be interesting and entertaining.
Re: The AYANEO Pocket Micro 2 Is Coming Back In Stock, Adds New 6GB + 128GB Stardust Purple Edition
And people say Analogue sells in too small of batches. Perfect device for people that always wanted to play games on an OG NES controller. Regardless of that it'll sell though, there's a whole collective of people who compulsively buy up every SBG device they can get their hands on.
Re: I'm Really Not Sure How I Feel About Sony Killing Physical Media
I stopped buying physical on PlayStation and Xbox a while ago. The discs never have the full game and you have to wait for a long while to download and install it anyway, what's the point? Resell prices are so laughably low, I don't care about getting some pocket change for a mostly useless disc which absolutely is not a preserved copy of a game like the old days.
Switch games have the day one patch crap too (I recall PC Gamer saying way back in 1998 that release n patch would become the norm if people didn't complain enough), but at least it's almost plug & play. Nintendo could definitely expand their unique market if they stick with the carts, and play up their intent to offer that option. It would be hilarious if Sony handed up yet another win to the big N especially with how people are totally losing their minds over this.
As if the industry wasn't obviously moving in this direction for like 15 years. The fight needed to be back then, when digital first became a widespread option on all consoles for more than just small titles. A drop in the bucket boycotting GTA 6 will do absolutely nothing now.
Re: Lenovo Kills Controversial Emulation Handheld That Came Pre-Loaded With Nintendo And Sega ROMs
As if the world needed yet another one of these devices anyway.
Preloaded devices baffle me. It's unbelievably easy in 2026 to get entire libraries of roms downloaded. Why even risk courting Nintendo's legal arm? But then people are selling loaded sd cards too, so maybe doing a quick search is just too much black magic for some.
Re: "DOOM, Quake, & Wolfenstein Are Not Easy Names To Carry On" - As Layoffs Hit, John Romero Praises id's Devs For Keeping Its Legacy Alive
Yeah it's a shame Romero is always dragged through the dirt over Daikatana and Ion Storm. Obviously he made some bad calls and should have been better about making promises & saying no to things, but his contributions to gaming far outweigh those blunders. Gaming will only continue to become more corporate and a proxy battleground for culture wars; we need people like him representing gamers on the bigger stages.
Re: Sega Appears To Have Been Caught Using GenAI Again, This Time With Dreamcast Keychains
They're going to keep doing this because they know eventually most people will get tired of the complaining & won't care anymore and/or the tech will rapidly improve until most people can't tell the difference.
You probably should come up with a term other than slop. Constantly braying and bleating the same phrase drives fatigue.
Re: "To Enter Now Would Be A Deathwish" - Limited Run's Ex-Boss Thinks Boutique Physical Publishing Is "Oversaturated"
This guy is such a clown. He and his crappy company have been salting that earth for years by putting out some shoddy products, doing overpriced rereleases of readily available mid tier (or even garbage tier) games, and in general driving the sentiment that these companies are grifty: monetizing fomo and encouraging the idea of physical games as an investment. Doing anything boutique is always a risk, but it's especially tough on this industry now specifically because of LRG. Dude needs to jog on.
Re: "Extremely Disappointing" - Are AI-Generated FPGA Cores The Future, Or The Death Of Accuracy?
The Analogue Pocket has been getting some interesting cores lately for PC games. Diablo, Heretic, Duke Nukem, Wolf3d, etc. which should be exciting. But they're all off with glitches (especially on automaps), subpar music, and in Diablo's case pretty much dogshit with an atrocious framerate. Makes me wonder how many of these are vibe coded. Perfect accuracy is the dream but the whole idea is to be as close to accurate as possible. There's a billion software emulation devices running these games under good enough conditions. If the quality becomes similarly inconsistent on the fpga cores, why even bother making them when they can be software emulated anywhere else
Re: XBLA Version Of Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night Gets The Recompilation Treatment
Glad they picked a good version to do this with and not the dogcrap psp/ps4 version. Buggy, boring new voice acting, and maybe most egregious a terrible sound to music balance which can't be adjusted. I can't believe they didn't get more flack for treating such a legendary game so poorly.
Re: "Instead Of The Vita, We Should've Made PSP 2" - Shawn Layden Sticks It To Sony's Last Handheld
I've put so many hours into the oled vita. It's an absolute powerhouse of a handheld and I'm glad they didn't skip out on any components or bells & whistles. That's why it's still a joy to play today and is head and shoulders over the endless deluge of cheap emulation handhelds.
The cost of required expansive memory + no onboard memory on the original model coupled with lack of game support is what killed it. All that other stuff wouldn't even approach dealbreaking for gamers if they weren't forced to buy an expensive memory card for digital content and if they had plenty of choices for great games to make that purchase worth it
Re: "The Return Of A Legend" - 3DO Might Be Returning As An Independent Game Company
Haha. Options for digging up old companies and zombifying them must getting pretty slim if 3DO is on the block. Can't wait to see what crap they try to sling under the nostalgic banner.
Re: "This Isn't Your Granny's Flip Phone" - Commodore Defends Its $500 Dumbphone
People spend wild amounts of money to listen to music in the most inconvenient ways. People shell out for expensive hardware so they can play games on similarly pricey old dumb tvs. Said people would probably kneejerk at these assessments to explain why that's different and worth the investment. Point is, there's no shortage of enthusiasts for boutique/niche stuff like this. Just because it's not one person's jam doesn't mean it's pointless.
Re: 34 Years Later, Wolfenstein 3D Just Got "One Hell Of An Impressive Port" For The Atari Lynx
Can never get enough of this classic. Last year it was the Vita port, now doing the Analogue pocket version docked and portable. I'll have to load this up on the Pocket now too.
Re: "Not Touched For Nearly 40 Years" - Rare Copy Of Super Mario Bros. Sells For $3 Million
Hello you absolute legends guy unavailable to cry about this as he's too busy being demonlished by Billy Mitchell and Billy Mitchell's daughter.
And screw these companies. Obviously shady operations and trying to pass it off like of course this game would command that price.
Re: "We Were Hoping To Have A Better Update Than This" - Hyperkin's Portable Genesis, The Mega95, Has Been Delayed Again
If it doesn't even meet Hyperkin's standards it must have been a twisted melted pile of garbage in a box.
Re: "The GBA Is So Back" - Gradius Advance Gets A Comprehensive Fan-Made Upgrade
Already plays beautifully on the Analogue Pocket, definitely not interested in playing this with quarter snatching mechanics.
Re: "We Are Deeply Sorry" - M2 Has Canned Ikaruga Successor Ubusuna
Rare show of respect to not push the project out anyway without him.
Re: The Team Behind This Motion-Sensing Box Think It Can Match The Sales Of The Nintendo Wii
My kids were having a blast with the store unit. I might have considered it until I saw it's a subscription based console. I'm so sick of that being the norm on every kids entertainment source. They know what they're doing. So I pulled out the wii U and my kids are now having a blast with the vwii.
Re: This Mega Man Hand-Drawn Game Guide Is A Delightful Human-Made Antidote To AI-Generated Slop
Now you guys have done it. Say AI too many times in an article and you summon the Borg collective that is YouNeedToUnderstand.