Damo

@RossoftheRobots I can't believe I missed that! The review has been updated...

@gmar I've updated the piece to make that a little more clear, but given that Sega assigned an official catalog number to the game and included it on one of the Game Gear Micros, I think it's fair to say that the company was involved in some capacity here. Had the GG Micro not happened, I doubt GG Aleste 3 would have existed.

@-wc- Don't have the demo sadly

@mariteaux Both this article and the job listing state that this is a U.K.-only position, sorry.

@slider1983 Again, coverage does not equal promotion. Think of this way: does the BBC 'promote' the topics it covers?

Secondly, we've already highlighted Commodore's use of GenAI here: https://www.timeextension.com/features/talking-point-a-curious-contradiction-at-the-core-of-new-commodore-makes-me-uncomfortable

@truth_will_set_u_3 This video will cover the Namco Museum series, not every Namco game ever made.

@slider1983 And? Sites like ours post trailers to upcoming games / hardware all the time.

The trailer was sent to us along with other assets, some of which have been published this page. We uploaded the trailer so it could be embedded in this article, as Commodore's wasn't live at that point.

I'm not sure what your point is?

@slider1983 "Promoting" and "reporting" are two entirely different things.

@81632bit As far as I can see, someone has spotted a phone which looks the same and jumped to conclusions.

If it does get confirmed, then we'll update this piece, but at the moment it's nothing more than speculation.

@Hank_Scorpio Fresh blood is coming on!

@Dustybin1 I initially removed your comment for obvious reasons, but I've reinstated it because it highlights a truly bizarre trend I've noticed amongst pro-AI people - the belief that those who are angered by IP theft, scams, pollution, job losses, disinformation, and more are somehow "woke".

That's a bit like saying someone who complains about their house being robbed is a communist.

@Dustybin1 This isn't the BBC, so if we have a personal opinion on something, we will say it - just like a great many other video game websites do when covering the topic of AI.

And as for a 'witch hunt', that's 100% correct - you may like AI personally, but a quick glance online shows there are many people who don't, with very good reason. The technology is currently being employed to plagiarise, steal content, scam people, cut corners, fire staff and much more besides.

I realise it has positive uses, just like any tech, but given the remit of this site and the manner in which AI (GenAI specifically) is impacting the industry, I think it's rather niave to expect us to not to cover it and share our opinion.

@Slider2711 Feels like a 'reverse ferret', doesn't it?

@mjparker77 That is already happening, sadly, so you're bang on the money.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/26/spotify-ai-remix-tool-protects-artists-slop

@PZT That should have been the tagline!

@DestructoDisk "Please Damien I ask you to turn back from the low road and take the high road, and get back to community building around retro gaming. Get back to journalism. Take criticism as a way to find your way back to what you were trained to do as a journalist. I assume TE had to have been a passion project. I know you love this stuff. Build up instead of tearing down. Please..."

TE isn't like the BBC; it covers news but is more akin to a 'blog' or magazine, like the old video game magazines of our youth (I'm not a trained journalist, either, which might not shock you). Those magazines, you will recall, never pulled any punches when it came to sharing opinion - and neither do we.

You say "build up instead of tearing down", but GenAI is tearing down this industry (and many others) as we speak. Look at the thousands of people let go by studio CEOs who are chasing the dream of cheap AI-based labour - only to find out that these AI firms are now moving to token-based billing and AI workers are actually more expensive than the human ones they (apparently) were good enough to replace.

If sites like ours don't shine a light on this kind of thing, then the industry is likely to be in a far worse place in a few years. So no, we will not go quietly into the night, as the expression goes.

I appreciate you giving your opinion, but the site's policy to GenAI won't change - it's lazy, exploitative and harmful to the environment – and, at this stage, the only people it truly benefits are the billionaires who own these companies.

@PopetheRev28 I say this with all of the respect I can muster, you might want to read up a little on this topic.

People are getting upset about AI for very, very good reasons.

1) Theft of IP
2) Displacement of jobs
3) Data centres being built close to homes
4) Environmental impact of said data centres
5) Big tech is becoming more powerful via AI adoption

And all for tech which is constantly wrong about stuff.

I have no issue with AI being used in areas of research and data handling, but GenAI is based solely on theft and its use it basically an excuse to cheap out on your product. That's another reason people dislike it.

This is worth a read: https://malwaretech.com/2025/08/every-reason-why-i-hate-ai.html

@PopetheRev28 It's about $375 with all the same connection options (they sell different variants), so that's almost twice as much.

That might not be a lot to you, but it is to a lot of other people - esp if they're not bothered about 4K output.

@Daniel36 I've seen it. I don't even have the words.

@Ristar24 I believe this was one of the first magazines to use some form of digital capture for screenshots, and the tech was very crude back then. EMAP magazines made the transition from traditional "camera pointed at TV in a dark room" approach to digital capture around the same time and the screens never looked quite as good again. Give me lovely scanlines any day of the week!

@GravyThief Thanks for recommending the Talking Minatures book, that's on my wishlist now!

@bring_on_branstons Thanks for the save!

@Guru_Larry The original cover was drawn by hand, I know cos I've seen the original artwork

@HoyeBoye I will have to check that out!

@Dr_Fresh Appreciate you bringing some common sense to this comment thread.

@TheArcadeHustler Microwaves aren't trained on stolen IP.

@Gauchorino "Without providing a source linking AI to this price increase, it's just @Damo weaseling his personal views in and calling them news."

I linked to a news story from the BBC regarding increased demand for chips relating to AI in the first line of this piece.

Also, have a read of this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E2%80%93present_global_memory_supply_shortage

"Unlike the 2020–2023 global chip shortage, which stemmed primarily from pandemic-related supply chain disruptions from COVID-19, this shortage is driven by a structural reallocation of manufacturing capacity toward high-margin products for artificial intelligence infrastructure, creating scarcity of computer memory in consumer and enterprise PC markets"

@DestructoDisk "To clarify, yes AI is wreaking havoc across our technological hobbies, and causing massive price increases... but not that massive. Nintendo units went up $50. Asus units have better tech and are newer builds and are hundreds cheaper than Steam Deck. The Deck is using the same mold it had printed millions of units with. Valve is it's own store front, they share no profits with retailers. Valve makes money off of the games sold for its handheld, Asus and other sub $1000 handheld vendors make zero dollars on games sold.... what is going on here? Does anyone have any real answers?"

There are economies of scale at play here.

Nintendo intends to sell 20 million consoles in the FY 2027 alone, which is around four times more units than the Steam Deck has sold since it went on sale. The more of something you make, the lower the cost is, generally.

Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that Nintendo's manufacturing cost per unit is lower than Valve's, hence the difference in price increases.

Then you have to take into account the fact that the bill of materials for both devices is likely to be very different, so you're not making a like-for-like comparison. Valve may have been aggressively subsidising the cost of the Steam Deck in order to drive up adoption, something Nintendo might not have to do to quite the same degree.

@Gs69 So happy to hear that!

@Gs69 The first one I had was literally a bare circuit board with two cartridge connectors, one for the import game and the other for the PAL game that would bypass the region lock. The latter stuck out the back of the board, and the slightest knock would cause the game to crash!

I then got one of those 'Game Master' converters which allowed both carts to be slotted in from the top, and that was much more reliable.

@jamess There's a lot of good AI can do in terms of scientific research and the like, but at the moment its most visible effects are rising RAM prices, rampant data centre construction, theft of IP, job losses, environmental downsides and AI-generated slop filling up every corner of the internet.

@gojiguy Sakimoto did the music for that, too!

@MoriyaMug I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the people who don't like hearing about the negative aspects of AI are the ones who use it regularly.

I could be wrong, of course...

@slider1983 It's not even remotely the same thing. People tracing artwork is still a human copying the work of another by hand; Gen AI is a program created by a company that has taken IP without permission and is generating revenue from a long production line of imagery, all based on stolen human-made assets.

You cannot compare one with the other.

@slider1983 Have a think about why that is.

@ojisan As others have said in this thread, AI and the related demand for chips is 100% the reason behind recent price hikes. Lots of things "aren't going away" but that doesn't mean we should simply lie down and accept it.

@Teksette That's a lovely thing to say! So glad you feel like you're getting a good return on your investment. Your support means a lot!

@Daric AI is the reason the Steam Deck now costs as much as $300 more, and you think I'm on some personal crusade? Take a look around you, everybody is up in arms about this. There's literally nobody claiming that a $300 price bump is 'fine'.

@Razieluigi Compared to the arcade versions and the likes of Gradius Gaiden, I'm not sure I could argue that the GBA was providing a more powerful platform to showcase the series, but that's just my opinion.

Not saying the GBA isn't a beast, but its small screen and weak audio couldn't match what we'd seen in the likes of Gaiden a few years earlier.

@mjparker77 Respectfully disagree. While the first game wasn't quite there, Fatal Fury 2 was fantastic and felt really dynamic and different when compared to SF2 (at least in my opinion). And I love SF2!

@koopababble @mariteaux Art is one of the key areas where AI's influence and impact are being felt most keenly, so I'm amazed you think I've had to shoehorn anything here.

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-inflected-crisis-artists-are
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8e9627w156o
https://www.corralldesign.com/writing/ai-harm-hypocrisy

(I realise there are many pieces out there which counter these views, but I personally know several artists who have seen their workloads vanish almost overnight thanks to the arrival of GenAI)

As @Thomystic says, many people use GenAI as a shortcut in the world of art now, so it's refreshing to see Summers put so much human effort into this project.

@Thomystic Thanks goodness someone got it

@Thad I hope you're not about to say something mean about AI. It never hurt anyone!

@axelhander Indeed we have, and the multiple links to reports, studies and other evidence you call "nothing" have all been conveniently ignored by you. Look, I have zero problem with you liking AI, millions of people do. But trying to make out there are zero negative consequences to the technology is ridiculous.

As for the "ignore" issue, you tagged me first in this comment thread.

(Oh, and Phil seems fine with the coverage BTW: https://bsky.app/profile/heyphilsummers.bsky.social/post/3mmclfovyrk27)

@axelhander It's done none of those things? So AI has trained itself on data taken with permission? That's news to me.

Feel free to back up your stance with actual data, because you know 100% that I can.

@mariteaux AI is destroying the internet, costing people their jobs, ruining the environment, stealing the hard work of real people, spreading misinformation and more, so forgive me if, every now and again, I have the audacity to champion human-made art as a tonic.

If you're looking for a site that's pro-AI, you're in the wrong place.

@mariteaux I'm not sure if you've noticed, but social media networks, news outlets, retailers and even sports teams are all using GenAI to create cheap, lazy and soulless imagery.

Me saying this book is the antithesis of this isn't an insult in any way, shape or form; it's the highest praise I can possibly give a project like this. The book serves as a reminder that human-made art is always a million, billion times better than anything an AI can produce.

If you take it as an insult, then you've got the wrong idea entirely.

@LuigiBlood I'd argue it's a perfectly reasonable question to ask given Nintendo's stance on similar projects.

@X68000 I actually think the opposite; a flash cart will have zero impact on the sales of AES+ games. This is being re-released primarily because people want to own the physical editions. I can see most AES+ owners not being interested in a flash cart, and those who are will almost certainly want to buy games as well - they'd mainly want it for the titles which will never see release / ports from NGCD etc.

Plus, these flash carts are sold in tiny, tiny quantities.

@X68000 You're assuming that Plaion will re-release every single Neo Geo AES game, which we both know won't happen.

NL wouldn't cover a flash cart for a current-gen system. However, it has, in the past, covered mods for systems which are no longer in active production. The AES+ blurs that line, I admit, but we've had Neo Geo flash carts for a decade now.

Also, I'd imagine even people who buy an AES+ and a flash cart are still going to pick up the new releases – I've got a NeoSD and a collection of original AES carts, because some AES games are so expensive I'd never be able to own them, even on the secondary market.