Daggot

I kinda want this for what it is. But, I can tell just looking at the photos that it's not ergonomic at all. I prob couldn't play on it for more than 30-45min before I'd need to take a break. But, then again, for these games, that's how you're supposed to do it. Pick-up-and play for a bit and then put it back down. Price isn't unreasonable either. If they're still around close to Christmas, this might end up on the list. But, the controls better work well so best to wait a bit anyways.

@MagicSN First and foremost, thank you for working on the port. I'd love to hear anything you can share with us on how that came to be. I really would not have thought Ubisoft would have allowed someone to work on the IP like that. KUDOS!

I didn't mean any offense in my comments. I think i didn't communicate my intent well. I wasn't talking as much about the A500 spec, but more about what the longer road would have been had the system lived on and the ideas behind the tech. Amiga with its dedicated chips, etc vs what the PC was and it's component design.

Do you receive royalties from sales through link in the article? I'll gladly buy a copy to support your work.

I tried to submit answers but it never took.

In Dallas, TX USA there are a number of these retro arcades. We even have a few of them as local chains. My favorite is Free Play.
https://freeplayinc.com/

They have a pretty good formula for how to make this work. He's got a balance of real classic hardware, some newer machines, good food (won a few award for the paninis) and a mix of can and tap beers. But, even he's had some struggles. One location didn't work out and he had to recently relaunch it as a Japanese focused arcade called Tokyo Station. Each location does a lot to build community with various tournaments on pinball and some of the competitive games, etc. He's even had some game devs visit the locations like John Newcomer, develop of Joust, for one tournament.

He also throws a lot of shade at other business that over rely on emulation and garbage food/drink. But, I get that given he's been able to get a lot of recognition for doing those things so well. So far Free Play has been around for several years and most locations are doing well. Unlimited play on some of the newer Stern Pinball tables? YES, PLEASE!

That actually look pretty good.

The distribution/port strategy is becoming odd given how much all the consoles are basically becoming PCs. I wonder if it's how the platforms treat the publishing, or maybe a hangup about Gamepass. There's been a lot more being said from devs about GP and it's not all good. Hopefully MS can keep working out the issues so the model is sustainable. It's a great value for gamers. Maybe not as much for publishers and devs right now.

The library of TG16/PCE CD RPGs always made me cry a little that never did get my hands on a system and player. I also missed out on the mini from a few years ago. I don't really have the time now to get into those old title, but this is neat that some of those title I always hoped I would get to play might be available.

AI translation should make it a no-brainer to do translation for titles like these. I've been watching Crunchyroll use AI translation more and more. It does ok. As long as you stop to load some token for the character names so it doesn't change the spelling on every occurrence, it's not so bad. Too bad it doesn't look like CR does that. Still has a ways to go to match a human translation and proofing. I expect AI will get there in a year or two with enough training.

@gingerbeardman That's about what I would expect at the price point. If you figure early Samsung phones with their AMOLED screens had that rez for a while, I always thought they were pretty good. It was hard to see the pixels. The base screen tech combined with image processing should make this mostly a non-issue.

@montrayjak Yup. DPI is going to be a key stat, but there are also image processing tricks that could be used to help boost the visual to appear sharper; edge enhancement and all the usual tricks. But, hopefully a real high rez screen is going to be used. Although, with the prices mentioned here, I kinda doubt it. Unless they are just being really generous on the Kickstarter pricing, that seems a little too cheap for a seriously nice screen to do super clean pseudo vectors. But, "good enough" with visual tricks should be fine. Problem is, it'll be hard to really show that in a video unless they record the screen itself instead of doing the normal screen capture.

I never played any of these, but I love the idea behind preserving some of the older early games like this.

I know exactly what you mean. This game was such an experience when it came out. The music, the art/graphics, level design with the mode 7 stuff and variations on gameplay due to more system power, etc. It all just hit perfectly. But really, the music especially was HUGE for the time. I still fire up Simon's Theme extended on YT from time to time. The music on the SNES was such a leap forward and it really made an impression on me. For me, the music and audio really set the mood for so many excellent SNES games, and Super Castlevania is right at the top of that list. So many memories. I didn't stay tuned into the IP though. I keep thinking about checking out newer titles. There are certainly several that standout that I should probably look at. But, there's just magic of the time and era that probably helped the SNES version just hit perfectly for younger me.

An R-Type tactics game? I'm super intrigued by this concept. Though, I can't imagine the game play being overly satisfying for either genre fans. Will certainly keep an eye out for this, but will totally wait for a review and hopefully a demo.

I need to get one thing off my chest though. The music in Super R-Type on the SNES is far superior to any of the recent remakes. I get that it's probably the nostalgia talking, but it just hits so right compared to like R-Type Dimension EX. The game play is fine in that one, but the music just doesn't hold up in to my rose colored glasses. I want better music.

I wish I had the money for this. Can you imagine what the demoscene could do with this thing, AND the lights on top of that? I hope he's able to keep the energy up, but I'm wiling to bet his channel is probably going to suffer if he isn't able to get help pretty soon. I'm sure his CEO duties will consume the majority of his time. Plus, he has a toddler and a wife - maybe even baby fractic 2 before too long (?). Anyways, def following this thing pretty closely. Wish I had some spare funds to mess with it. Maybe one of these future products. Would an Amiga one push me over? not sure.

I'm going to side step the topic of physical for now. I like the question about what used to make games fun. It's something my friend and I have talked about multiple times. We're just not having as much with newer games like we used to. One thing we feel is a factor is that newer games have way too many systems. And that's kind of a two fold problem as we see it. One, it just takes too much time investment to get into a game. This is a combination of ageism as we're both parents now and are established in our careers, etc, and a shift far away from the more pick-up-and-play mentality of earlier gaming. Which is exactly what Atari has been focusing on more; with mixed success. We like the deeper story stuff than early gaming. We enjoy the tech and new mechanics, etc. It's just there's too much fluff and added detractors like DLC/IAP, etc. that get in the way of the core of the gameplay.

So, if this guy thinks he make games that gets back to the core, then I'm all for wishing him well. I guess a retro console is probably a good place to start so that technical limitations will force you to keep ideas and scale in check. The near limitless resources of modern systems means you can easily make a game too big and degrade a good idea so easily. I won't back their kickstarter, but I will follow to see the ideas turn out.

@Razieluigi My thoughts as well. And, their IP titles were often pretty weak. Rushed cash grabs if I remember correctly.

If they want to be a publisher and work with Indie, this goes back to my question about what does it mean to be Indie? I keep wondering if what we're really talking about is non-AAA games. A A A would imply there are A and AA games, but the media and trade press never uses those labels.

Personally, I'm not expecting anything impressive. Unless they have at least two key IPs they were able to secure, it probably wasn't worth reviving the brand name just to work with Indie developers. Better uses for that money I would expect.

@littlemisskittn The idea behind the X16 is most certainly niche. Its audience is going to be a mix of developers who enjoy the challenge of the spec limits to develop a project around, or enthusiasts that want to try to capture some of the spirit of the era. I want to be in the former group - I think I would enjoy that challenge, but I'm not. And, when I try to revisit older games, it's for 20min and I'm done. I like the idea of the X16, and I support the concept for those that would, but I passed on it.

@SlangWon That's a good point I hadn't considered.

There are a number of title I'm a little surprised are not listed. A few may bring up the question of what is considered Indie. But, I will say I am very glad to see That Dragon, Cancer. It a whole different thing all together. I could never play it. It's too powerful pulling on my heart strings. That said, I'd say most of these titles deserve to be included.

From the website:

Games featured
80 Days, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Among Us, Axiom Verge, Before Your Eyes, Blasphemous, Braid, Broken Age, Castle Crashers, Cave Story, Celeste, Coffee Talk, Cuphead, Darkest Dungeon, Dead Cells, Dear Esther, Disco Elysium, Don’t Starve, Downwell, Enter the Gungeon, Fez, GRIS, Gone Home, Guacamelee, Hades, Her Story, Hollow Knight, Hotline Miami, Hyper Light Drifter, Hypnospace Outlaw, Into the Breach, Journey, Knights and Bikes, Limbo, Lonely Mountains Downhill, Minecraft, Monument Valley, Night in the Woods, Octodad: Dadliest Catch, OlliOlli, Ori and the Blind Forest/Will of the Wisps, Outer Wilds, Overcooked, Oxenfree, Return of the Obra Dinn, Risk of Rain, Rogue Legacy, Sea of Stars, Shovel Knight, Slay the Spire, Spelunky, Stardew Valley, Steamworld Dig, Stories Untold, Super Meat Boy, Terraria, That Dragon, Cancer, The Binding of Isaac, The Stanley Parable, Thomas Was Alone, Tunic, Undertale, Unpacking, Vampire Survivors, Velocity, What Remains of Edith Finch.

Like others, never did have a chance to play on Vectrex. I'd be on the fence here since I have no history with it. But, I think this is a good direction. Hopefully the controllers are only just prototypes as well. I'd need to see what new games have been produced recently. The one thing about the system was it's only a monochrome screen. That was a pure cost saving move if I remember right. Maybe the mini could support color for home brew? But, then it's something else, not really a Vectrex I guess.

MicroProse teaming up with Ron Gilbert was NOT even close to being on my bingo card. What an odd pairing from the earlier days of PC gaming.

This looks interesting. It's got some real sense of urgency to keep moving, and the rouge elements should keep it fresh. I assume since this is Gilbert there should be some good dialog in the game.

I never got to play with an A1200, so not sure how much this will appeal to me. If it can emulate the A500 so all games would work w/o issue, it might the better option for someone that hasn't picked up the A500 Mini.

Including Settlers II is a genius play. Assuming the price on this system is in-line with the others, that alone might be worth picking this up just to mess with the better hardware capabilities. Oh ya, I bet there is some super cool demoscene stuff that takes advantage of the better graphics chip. Hmmmm

So many thoughts.

First, this is good news. I've always wondered how the Amiga would have fared if it didn't decline when it did. Although this game required more than the usual A500, I guess that's to be expected. So, this is great news. I had a lot of fun with this sequel on the PC. The graphics and little noises from your serfs where the perfect mix, and the gameplay was well balanced. Sometimes it feels like we can't find that balance any more. So many games have to have a stack of game systems a mile high now. I think this is why Atari has been having some success with simplified games w/o stacks of mechanics and systems.

Next, OMG, Ubisoft did fans a solid? How did that happen? I mean, they licensed the IP AND allowed a retro port? Is there a new business development manager in charge or something? Super-Bonus that it doesn't have microtransactions.

This is a necessarily boost for the original IP. The last few games have been terrible. Comments from long time fans lament the direction Ubisoft has been going with the IP. I really struggled with Settlers 7. I mean, you can't even find the game on Steam anymore. I stopped playing it. The games after moved more to RTS with the last entry being a straight up RTS. I think most people feel 3 was the peak and everything after is not worth playing. I had some fun with Rise of an Empire in sandbox mode, but that's about it.

BUT, let's talk about Pioneers of Pagonia. The true spiritual successor from the original developer team. Been enjoying the game since the early betas. It still has some issues, but I've been enjoying it far more than I have the later Settlers games. I feel it's moving in the right direction and the developer really understands what long time fans want.

Now, back to the elevated specs. I'm torn by this. Emotionally, I don't want "Amiga" to be more than an A500 or maybe A600. But, the reality is if the brand had lived on, it would have to start down the tech upgrade path that was the PC master race in some form or another. I guess we'd likely have moved to ARM, but would Amiga have been a leader in that space? Given what happened in the console wars, I'm not sure that's the right conclusion. Interesting thought exercise though.

Even though I spent more time with the C64, I am probably more excited about what might come of the Amiga. I played more games on the C64 overall, but I was so enthralled at what the Amiga was capable of. It helped that things like BBS systems enabled stuff from the Euro demoscene to come to the US which really pushed the Amiga to do things we'd never seen. Some of the Amiga games were phenomenal, but other were so meh given what the top games showed what was possible.

Super wishing I hadn't tossed my 3.5" disk collection. So many games, MOD files and so many memories gone. <cry>

@nuff64 Mouse for aiming would be good

Knowing some Spanish, I always pronounced it as the Spanish term. Or, was at least influenced in how I said it. I might have gone back and forth between -guh and -gah depending on which crowd I was with.

I'm not willing to send the energy to research this, but going just by the quotes in the article, it sounds like they only have the rights for the EU. Not the global rights and certainly no the rights in the US. It's possible Perifractic may concede this and leave the EU market to them; as long as he can rights in the UK where he's from. That leaves a big whole in the strategy, but it would be a lot of money to fight this.

That said, yeeeeah, the innovative stuff they're doing is nothing that appeals to the same market segment. At least what Peri is trying to do would resonate a lot more with the community.

Putting the legal stuff aside, I can see this working. Not to massive profits, but I can see this bein a legitimate business venture. There's been a bit of a revival of retro tech with projects like Commander X16 and other community projects. This is just capitalizing on that. They'll need solid roadmap so they don't get minimized over time. I half hope they push forward to give us a vision of what could have been next if C= didn't go under. The next platform after the Amiga been like the PC? IDK, but I kinda hope it would have been different.

Q:"why on earth would you want it to?"
A: Money!

Unfortunately for gamers, publishers, especially big ones, are just businesses that only exist to make money. We all know this.

On one hand, I would be willing to entertain the idea of AI generated games IF, and only IF:

• Game prices would drop drastically
• Studios and publishers would be more willing to take risks, try new things - this an assumption that AI can reduce cost to the point this is more economical
  — but, it's a two edge sword in that if publicly available LLMs are able to do this, then you don't need the publisher to generate low cost slop.
• ZERO bugs
  etc. you kinda get the intent of this line of thinking. There has to be significant trade off for the consumer or it decreases in value drastically.

I'll admit it took my brain 5 whole seconds to try to recall this game. Looking at the screenshot I'm like "what game is this that Bioware made and someone wants to do a remake?" doh

BioForge! OH! Not a game I have many memories of. As the article stated not a game most are likely to remember all that well. I skipped it, and I don't think any of my friends played it either. I don't remember it making many waves either.

I like the idea. An FPGA is a novel solution for true compatibility. It solves many problems while allowing modern touches like HDMI and storage options. But, yeeeeah, that price point. Not for everyone. The lowest isn't like out of the reach of most people, but it's definitely a luxury purchase. But, I guess this may also mean to live in the market alongside of the previous emulators like the C64Mini/Maxi. I assume the FPGA is the main factor on the price. Same with the like the mister projects being cost prohibitive.

I like this idea as a first pass, but not the price point. I'm sure they are happy with the current preorder volume, but I'm sure they are also doing the math at how they are missing the mass market. That said, it's also possible they don't want to hit the mass market which could cause supply chain and production issues they'd rather avoid. I'm sure the bean counters have done the math and this is probably where they think the sweet spot is. I hope this does well and paves the way for more budget friendly options later.

So sad to hear this. I was just thinking earlier this week I hadn't seen many of his latest videos due to how busy I've been at work. Found his channel quite a while back. I was always surprised how much detail he was able to dig up on game histories. What a real loss for the community. I knew he had various medical conditions, but didn't know about the heart attack. Dang. Far too young.

Prayers for his family.

I assume they hired some short term contractors to fill some gaps and those are counted in the layoffs. Otherwise, ya the numbers don't add up to what the article mentions.

Oh this looks like so much fun. Added to my list of future backlog games.

If you've been following his channel for a while, I believe he's telegraphed his intentions for a while. Given the user mods he's covered, his comments in recent videos, etc, to me it seems the first goal will be to elevate some popular user mods to 1st party. Allow them to apply for the Commodore brand, bring their QA up to a set standard, maybe even have help with manufacturing and certainly help with marketing. That's the low hanging fruit.

I expect there will be some crossover product development with the Commander X16 crew. That seems like the next lower fruit to be had. Same community, similar base tech, etc. What this would actually end up being since they already have the X16, my guess would be a revised product with the Commodore license. One things he and 8-Bit guy has stated multiple times was how the Vic 20 and C64 came with think user manuals that taught how use the machine, how to code some simple things like a sprite on the screen, music, etc. Having the resources and branding for a follow-up machine to focus on and fulfill that kind of ideal could be interesting.

The key limiter will be funding for R&D, which is why he's leading with licensing deal for the retro community. Allow them to do the R&D for mods and add-ons for the base system. Get that cash cycle going so they can invest into product development. Having gone through the X16, they have a good idea of what that involves to plan for any new 1st party product, so like what was mentioned above about expanding the AGA architecture. Personally, I've always wondered what the evolution of the Amiga would have been. Would it have fallen into the same GPU convention as the PC did? What would the sound capabilities have been, especially given how sound chips are all but forgotten about as just a part of the motherboard and purely commodity. Most of these questions and concepts end up back at the X16 in my head. It's laid so much of the ground work for these kinds of ideas.

Would I invest? No. Oh, I'll buy a bit of merch, a cool tshirt, etc. sure. But, investing needs to stay with the professionals and not the community.

I guess my post didn't go through. They did a near stealth patch a while back to make the game compatible with Win10 on Steam. I need to go back and give it a try.

I tried Golden Axe Classics. Meh. The virtual controls left a lot to be desired. Not even haptics so I missed a lot of button press timing. Maybe with a controller it might be decent. But, I hear the emulation is not great. Maybe Shining Force would do better since it doesn't need fast reflex button mashing.

Hadn't found this creator before, but I do like his energy. But, WHOA, this is a great story. Love the theme song. Going to need to check out this guy's content. Probably need to add Yuzo's channel too. Never thought to go look for game music composers.

He's got an Adam Savage quality that helps his presentation style.

@slider1983 Agreed. But, ya they aren't going to sell it through a competing digital store front. I assume the game requires the Battlenet client to run, which I'm sure Bliz and Steam haven't come to an agreement on terms.

I have found memories of this game. I really enjoyed it, but I also remember thinking none of my friends would like it because it wasn't an action platformer.

@slider1983 This happened after Bliz started trying to revive some older games.

I remember this. Never got one as a kid. Even back then I remember thinking you should be able to hack the concept by making your own barcodes. I never have seen a guide showing if the numbers off a barcode translated directly to stats so you could write out a perfect character. That was my thinking as a kid. But, even back then, the appeal of just scanning the barcode off of everything hoping to get lucky to find an S rank fighter was pretty slick.

In a very high level concept, it's a very crude form of collectable card battling that became Pokeman and the like. Although the randomness of your deck being based on what you had off packages at home is comical; though about the same as the randomness of what's in a booster pack.

@JackGYarwood The Shogo sequel became NOLF? huh. In a weird way ya I can kinda see that. Too bad mech based games are just not popular anymore. There's little chance of another dev wanting to trying a game in that kind of setting. I don't imagine there's much mech game development going on in Japan either outside of shooters, and certainly not FPS. LOL

What a nice read. I'm sad that I didn't know about this game. Never even seen any images of it before this article. Looks like something I would have really enjoyed.

On the topic of Monolith games that don't get enough attention, Shogo still ranks near the top for me. It wasn't a great game. It was fun, and tried something different with a heavy influence of mech anime. My gaming group at the time had a blast doing beta testing for multiplayer - one guy found so many holes in the maps to fall through. I expect sales were disappointing so there was never talk of a sequel. But, given how mainstream anime has gotten, although not mech anime as much these days, I kept hoping someone would make an attempt to restart the IP. Now, that's just never going to happen.

I can kind of understand people having a reaction. It falls into that balance of motion, smoothness, visual queues, etc. Thankfully they didn't try to ad head bob back then. Now we know about various "tricks" to help with motion.

I never played this. Too bad, younger me would have been all over this kind of game. I've tried to go back to some older 1st person crawlers like this; naming Dungeon Hack after watching Pro Jared do a few videos on it. I think nostalgia is ruining what I keep hoping the experience should be. I have memories of being sucked into games like Dungeon Master on the Amiga with it's fantastic sound design; making you feel like you were there. I hoped maybe a crawler on the Quest 2 would do the trick, but those all want you to flail around too much; although Ancient Dungeon was still a good game - just didn't scratch this specific itch. But, love the look of this. Maybe I need to try it.

The pixel art is solid. The in-game 3D stuff needs more style. But, I love the idea behind this. Wishlisted.

@heligo Took my brain a moment when I got to the 3rd line to realize it was that song. Now it's going to stick all day long.

The amount of drawn detail in that header image is bonkers. My eye has no idea where to start when looking at it. It's one of those images you can spend days looking over trying to find everything going on.

I've never heard of this game, but the design of the main ship looks a bit like Thexder.

2025 is really shaping up to be a golden year for retro and retro-style games. This looks promising. I remember this game, but I don't remember if I actually played it much. There are other games from this era I'd love to see get a remaster.

@N64-ROX I was thinking the exact same thing. Almost looks like an early Sid Meier game.

@N64-ROX I was being largely sarcastic. The "think of the shareholders" bit should have given it away. I can see how AI would benefit some dev time, but even with prompts it is a different skill set that has to be developed for the producer/designer to get what they want. It might prove that better writing skills for prompts, being able to describe what you want the AI to do might prove to be a more important skill. I've seen prompts that are multiple paragraphs in length. Would it be using word to describe a storyboard frame? that might almost take longer depending if you need very exact details. anyways, I have mixed opinions and concerns about AI in general.

Oh boy. About to fully date myself here. I used to work at a Waldensoftware store waaaay back. Most of you probably don't know that name. It was a spinoff of Waldenbooks, which if you're not old enough think of that was pre B&N. Anyways, worked at a software store during the era of these boxes. The non-standard boxes, yeah they stood out from the crowd. TOTAL PAIN to manage them on the shelf. I kinda doubt corporate ever paid attention to this stuff. There were some boxes that just wouldn't even stand on their own; you had to lean them. The worst were the ones that didn't have a flat front. I kinda miss the design of big boxes, but also don't miss having to manage them on the shelf. If anything, I really miss the art on the boxes. The original Atari 2600 game boxes are masterclass in box art. Digital has killed box art across all media. It's also killed pack-ins like mini comics, cloth maps, etc. sigh.

Several thoughts ran through my head reading this. Super interesting to say the least. But, I'm curious how this came to be. I don't imagine there is a high number of Atari+ systems in circulation. There probably isn't enough critical mass numbers for Toaplan to approach Atari for this. Would license make money? I mean, I love this idea and the video looks like the game would be fun. Can it make enough money for this to happen again? I'm not so sure.

Would this get a Steam release so it's available to a wider audience? Or, is the game engine something they can reuse the code base on other platform? Stuff like that would make more sense for the development effort.