DestructoDisk

@Thad You should also think about that saying when you think about highly capable leaders of technology. People who make it possible for this very website to be hosted along with many other retro game projects and products we depend on.

“ Linux is not one of those anti-AI projects, and if somebody has issues with that, they can do the open-source thing and fork it.

Or just walk away.

AI is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it's clearly a useful one.

It may not have been that "clearly" even just a year ago, but it's no longer in question today.

There are other questions around AI (like what the economy of it will actually look like in the end), but "is it useful" is no longer one of those questions. Anybody who doubts that clearly hasn't actually used it.”

-Linus Torvalds

Having these new physical releases is awesome. Be even cooler if Evercade and Polymega collaborated on a system where you could use both formats. I'd also love to see some dedicated solo releases for some of the best games. Something where some of the more legendary games could get their own box art and manual, and maybe a second manual sized book about the game's history and interesting information. These collections are great for picking up a bunch of games at once legally, but picking out a single game off the shelf insures I will give it focus and attention and not get distracted bouncing from game to game. It makes it a more special experience.

@metaphysician Agreed. That is why I don't use AI, it just isn't good yet. You have to put in so many prompts and then you still have to touch it up by hand. I'd rather just start from scratch. For me it is easier, because I get everything exactly how I want it from the start, and the process of creating sometimes helps in giving me new ideas and methods as I build. I have always been someone who starts with a blank slate and a single idea. Once I start working on that idea, it grows on it's own.

I guess that process could work with AI if the first idea I prompted worked, but it is never 100% right no matter how good the prompt is, so the creative process gets lost, just trying iron out the first idea. You also start getting pulled by the tool you are working with (AI) as you are forced to work within its capabilities. Your exact ideas get removed and you are forced to compromise. It is a bit like working with a tool like RPG Maker vs. coding from scratch. If you use RPG Maker, in the end everybody knows you used it as all RPG maker games have the same feel and tells. It has the side effect of looking cheaper or having less value.

@Lanmanna Personally I am not a fan of AI, or a hater. Just tired of all the ragebait mixed in with all the cool stuff here. I’d rather they ask for donations at the end of every story, than this site become Facebook. Engagement may be good for profit, but it certainly isn’t good for image. Doesn’t make the site look any better than all the other evils going on in tech.

@firenze Honestly just think it is virtue signaling. If they cared about people, their websites and sponsored links wouldn’t be so filled with trackers. They talk about being ethical, then do the exact opposite. They constantly harp on and on about how other companies are greedy, but they sure are happy to fill their webcode to the brim with stuff that harms their readers, so long as it fills their purse.

Its also funny how data centers are suddenly a water problem for them… when they have been hosting their websites for years on data centers that have open loop water systems that actually consume massive amounts of water. Most modern data centers being built for AI use, use a closed loop system that hardly uses any water past the initial investment. It is a complex subject, most people pushing this narrative hope you don’t look into. They know enough people will just read the headlines and knee jerk on over to their torches and pitchforks.

Water and data centers were never a problem for them, but suddenly when it fits a political agenda they start talking about it. Whatever gets the clicks and the emotions that create engagement. That is the secret to media in the 2020s, exploit people psychology to gain profit. They copy and pasted this formula from social media, which has hugely eaten into their profits in modern times.

@profkross I assume they are referring to your original comment where you come off as saying 2D PS1 games are an issue.

@JohnSummers1025 I would disagree. Castlevania has a very mixed fanbase that are looking for different kinds of games. Some like the 3D games, some the classic platformer, and some the metroidvanias. Some newer games having more emphasis on story doesn’t mean Castlevania isn’t for people who want pickup and play games, or that all future Castlevanias games need to be story heavy. If you look at the general reception Castlevania games get, the classic games have much higher ratings on Steam than stuff like Lords of Shadow. So personally I see it as a Sonic situation… the 2D games are beloved, but the IP holder puts out way more modern stuff that isn’t received as well.

From the trailer the writing seems a bit cringe anyway. But I’ll hold off judgement until I see more. I am in if the gameplay is fun and the story is really really good or I can just easily skip it.

@Damo I actually had no idea you weren’t a trained journalist. All I know is you have been in the gaming news business for years, so I just assumed you had formal training since you started before the internet age if I remember correctly.

I still think most patrons of this site treat this like a news platform. I have a huge collection of retro game magazines and I can’t really find anything as political as this site has been lately, but I am sure if I dig deep enough an exception example could be found, though that certainly wasn’t the tone and trend of gaming magazines.

Though I do admit some of the magazines had their own brand of click bait for the era, with bikini clad women, gore, and just general shock imagery.

Anyway thank you for clearing things up on how you view the site. And as always thank you for hearing me out. When it’s relevant to the article I will always voice my opinions if I think something is negative and divisive to the gaming community. If that is not acceptable I respect your decision to remove my comments. You have to run your show how you want it run. You built it all with years of experience. I do enjoy the regular stuff, the small news and updates to little projects that are shared here. There aren’t many other options out there atm anyway. Especially not any delivered in such a clean format.

I do appreciate and value your work, even if I don’t agree with all of it.

@Martin_H Yeah I don’t understand people cheering for a bubble pop. When that happened with the internet, the internet’s rollout just kept full speed ahead. We just lost a lot of mid sized players. Most of the big guys stayed around and consolidated power. Eventually it became so consolidated that now a handful of sources almost exclusively run the whole of the internet. Little guys were run out. Average people, even people who hadn’t adopted the internet, were harmed because of the financial collapse.

I see the same happening with AI. In the aftermath of a bubble pop the biggest wealthiest companies will endure, and all of their competitors will go under. Regular people that don’t even use AI, will feel the effects of a damaged global economy. AI will steam roll ahead, but now controlled by a few elite companies that don’t have anyone’s best interest in mind, and now have no competition to keep them in check.

Web 2.0 is the format AI 2.0 will follow.

I am for regulation. Helping creators. Etc. Hopefully all that stuff gets done asap. If that had been done before it was too late with Facebook, we as a world would be in a lot better place than we are now.

Contrary to what some people may be saying about me, I am not a “cats out of the bag” do anything you want, guy. I am a “cats out of the bag”, better make sure it is tame, guy. No matter how loudly people yell online, it is true, AI isn’t going away. People use it. Best we can do is make sure it doesn’t get out of control, and try to limit its harm. I do not look forward to a bubble bursting, that only harms regular people, startups, and the mid size guys actually keeping things in check.

@Quick_Man Calm down friend. I am simply pointing out discrepancies and asking for more community focus. I think that has plenty of constructive merit.

I have no issues with AI stories. I dislike the extreme lengths gone to, to push a narrative and fuel flames of hate and division in the gaming community. Again I think expressing that is criticism and it is helpful. I don't like to see the same tactics used here as is done on social media and bias news outlets like Fox.

It is clear many readers feel the same. Pointing that out is also constructive and a part of journalism, public accountability.

This site is owned by Damien and he has the right to do whatever he wants to do with it. He doesn't have to follow normal journalism ethics if he doesn't want to. He can chase the social media model mostly created by folks who by and large are not traditionally trained journalists. I am simply asking him as a member of the public, please don't go that route. Please in this modern online world of negativity, build something optimistic. There is no community without a center.

If it is bad for me to ask for center and balance and community.. well I don't know what to say. I am sorry you feel that way.

@Quick_Man A quick look through various social media posts proves that just isn't true at all. It is a pretty contested topic with a lot of people on both sides talking back and forth. You might be in a social media bubble if you think 99% of people reacted that way. The proof is plain as day for anyone to go check right now.

As for the journalism thing, I suggest you look up journalistic integrity. It is absolutely against the code, morals, and values of journalists as a whole. Their focus is supposed to be as unbiased as possible, impartial, fair, objective. In other words, both sides...

Also a part of journalistic integrity is accepting public accountability. Given what is happening here, it seems there is no accountability to the public, only to factions of agreement.

As my initial comment stated, extremism always leads to intolerance. There will always be censorship on critics. This isn't left. This is the opposite of liberal.

To the owner and writer:
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...

@Gauchorino Agreed. I personally share his politics on most stuff including the AI stuff. But the constant hammering on political topics and always taking a side is so disheartening. I am here for video games, not politics, not agendas. The thing that brought this most out in the open was when TimeExtension without any shame at all came out and said they will be directly, politically, and intentionally shafting all news about ModRetro Chromatic. Now of course they weren't going to stop reporting all the CCP arms funding retro handhelds. That isn't part of the agenda. That is just gross, and turned me off so hard. It makes you doubt everything else you read here, because you know in the back of their head, they care most about controlling a narrative, not about just presenting us facts and updates. I don't get why outlets want to completely throw their credibility in the trash. People want CSPAN, not Fox and Friends. Fox and Friends isn't news, it is propaganda. You can't build a community or enjoy a hobby, when the curator of the community is peddling rage bait and bias while debating people in the comments about politics. Why are we even talking about politics? This is a retro gaming site. Yet every other story is filled with people debating, not about graphics or top games, but about world politics. This is intentional. I'd love for it to stop. Please @Damo , this isn't the first time I have reached out to you. You are hurting your site, your reputation, and the community. Please build up instead of tear down. You can do better than this.

@Damo I'd appreciate a little more on the story. Maybe some investigation. $240-$300 price increase is not as cut and dry as "Because AI". Something else is going on here. May be as simple as wanting more profits or as complex as... Valve is really bad at negotiating with and finding suppliers.

Look at it like this... Here in the states you can get a much newer, more powerful handheld for $599. This handheld is sold at major retailers for that price, meaning the manufacturer has to split earnings with the retailer.

Now look at the actual price of RAM and storage. Right now in the states you can walk into a major retailer and as an individual consumer, you can buy 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD for $200. Valve, who does not have to share a cut with a retailer is charging $240 more than they were before, for 16GB RAM and 512GB storage.. meaning if you add in whatever was the bundled cost of the RAM and storage before, we are likely paying $300 or more for these chips. How is it possible that Valve who makes bulk orders and gets to negotiate their price with producers, is paying substantially more than an average joe off the street who is buying one unit? Something is off there.

Is it Valve price gouging with the excuse of "You know market trends and AI"? Is it horrendous supply chain management from Valve? Is it something else? I don't know, but if someone could look into this, it would be a lot more helpful than just repeating the same headline we already saw on every mainstream outlet. No offense but it does seem like the site is rage farming more and more everyday.

Also, something I don't see discussed much is what happened with refurbished pricing. If the new units had massive price increases and the only reason was AI... then why do the refurbished units that are old stock returns and have been sitting in a warehouse for half a year, have a huge price increase too? That seems like just slapping on a higher price because they can. Is there a legit reason these old units now cost what new units used to cost?

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?

@Dr_Fresh there is actually a bit of a mystery. AI isn't the whole story.

@metaphysician They were going to lose the PS1 generation either way. The Saturn and the 32X were both a mess to program for. The thing is, the Saturn was going to be DOA with or without the 32X, so it was a pointless step that cost Sega too much in the end. 32X at least had a chance because it could rely on the Genesis vast software library and it was ultimately cheaper so folks looking for a CD player might pick them up just for that, especially if they already owned Genesis games. There were many people who bought PS1s because they are good CD players at a decent price. The Saturn didn't have the audio market to rely on because it was priced higher. There is a chance Sega could have been in a nice second place spot, instead of in last place behind Nintendo which itself was pretty far behind Sony.

A competently programmed 32X game isn't that far off from a PS1 game. Developers weren't really giving any time or effort when they produced 32X games because they knew about the upcoming Saturn. Sega themselves were barely putting dev time in for 32X games, so we basically got Genesis "plus" games, as many of the releases were basically just Genesis games with a few extra bells and whistles throw in as devs avoided making full ground up 32X games.

I think if Sega had just stuck with the 32X, it would have gone a long way with the fans. The Saturn launch was a disaster having fans and retailers turn on Sega.

The Super Nintendo went on to sell games and systems in the early PS1 era. Sega could have done the same with having the 32X supporting the Genesis library. Devs could have kept pumping out games for the large install base of Genesis owners who hadn't moved up to the next generation yet, while Sega could slowly build up 32X sales. This would have left them a lot of development time for the Dreamcast, instead of all the money and man hours put into developing the Saturn that was doomed.

@Martin_H IMHO The right play would have been the 32x being released as it was for those who wanted to upgrade affordably to the next generation. As well as releasing a 32x console with a CDROM drive and cart slot. Forget the Saturn launching later and try to get the Dreamcast out a year earlier. If Dreamcast had a little more time on shelves before PS2 and they hadn't lost so much money on Saturn, I think Sega might still be around. From what I heard Dreamcast was actually profitable and doing well, but it wasn't enough to unbury them from all their previous losses.

@Damo This site was so great when I first came here. Now it just feels like Facebook. Constantly seeing stories that are political and the writing is obviously leaning to one side. Then there is the outright activism of banning coverage of devices because of their developer. The owner of the site constantly coming into the comments to argue their politics with people.. uhhg. I agree with most of your political views, but I feel like you are just harming your brands and hurting the community for no reason.

I don’t know, I might be unique, but I come here for updates on retro gaming and to enjoy my hobby with community members. Not a fan of the Fox and Friends style echo chamber stuff.

It seems lately the journalism has gone off the rails and you are posting a lot of outrage culture stuff, the same stuff that we see on the worst of social media. The comments section is proof of that.

Hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way, and you can take the criticism positively. A lot of normal people that are exhausted from political wars will just walk away from the site without saying anything. So even if TE is growing, it could certainly be doing better and people coming here would probably be walking away with a more positive experience.

I get that everything in the world isn’t pretty. But things don’t have to be painted in positive or negative lights. When they are political in nature, you can just drop the details of what is news. Readers can fill in the blanks. Does anyone really want their news site to build a narrative? I don’t think most people do.

Of course it is your site and you can do whatever you want, but it is just a bummer seeing this happen. I was crushed when “Sidescrollers” from ScrewAttack’s Craig Skistimas appeared on YouTube again, but it just ended up being some right wing political retro game show.

This stuff does nothing for the community, it just divides people. At the same time it hurts trust in the writing. Politics are hugely complex, and being right or wrong is impossible. So when you paint political things as obvious truths and then go so far as to debate people that have a different takes, it makes it looks like you have a hard time being non bias. So people start to question if your non political writing is fair or accurate too.

I think you have a good heart and you probably don’t want people walking away from your site with a sour taste in their mouth. So maybe you can think of some of these things I have brought up and consider them. Maybe less of the “got em” stories. Less of the public shame stories. There is so much positive stuff going on to report. And when big news happens that you can’t ignore, you can just avoid the spin and the justice seeking and let people make up their own minds. Regardless people will fight in the comments, but at least it isn’t being stoked by the site itself… much like the evil social media algorithms.

I don't know why I thought that was Gail Tilden at first.

@-wc- Actually some studios have admitted they feel their data points to them losing sales due them trying to follow current social trends, that seems like they are popular because they are popular online… but not in the real world, and even more so the real world of people who buy games. Eastern developed and designed games have been seeing new successes because they haven’t followed the western online social trends.

“TheBackgroundNPC” (I am not really familiar with her other than the video I watched the other day… was on some kind of panel for Lord of the Fallen II, where they were looking for input from players on what they actually wanted in video games, and she basically wanted them to bring back sexy female video game characters, because in her eyes part of the reason so many modern games are failing is boring female characters that are trying to walk on eggshells to fulfill certain social requirements.

Gross all the way around. Deceptive people on social media deceiving people for engagement. Then the political gaming news sites making articles about it for outrage engagement.

It works. Both parties are getting their clicks and having the community fight in the comments.

I’d like to thank all the activists for their hard work in dividing people. Ya’ll keep going. Short term gains, until eventually everyone is so stressed put they just leave. Then maybe we can finally get back to playing games.

@Thad You are sarcastic, but off the mark by miles. All you did was prove my point with that perfect example. Average video game journalists and regular people talking about Guerrilla War when it was on the market were not striking up political conversations about it. They talked about the game and if it was fun or not. Even with an extreme example like that, the easiest possible thing to get political about... and no one did. We all just saw a game, and talked about playing it. Just shows how ridiculous things have gotten and how easy people are to play and divide. Even asking people to lay off the politics and have fun, instantly triggers people... "No we can't live in a world where we don't ruin everything by debating politics... oh the horror!"

Notice I never said anything about there being games with or without politics? My comment was strictly about how people behaved in the community. And sure enough someone has to come commenting days later, without actually reading or understanding what I wrote. Again I thank you for proving everything I said was 100% true.

Can't help but notice, as the writing here on Time Extension and NintendoLife gets more political, so too does the bickering here in the comments. Can we all just play some games and take our political arguments and stories to political sites? And please don't hit me back with "but you can't talk about games without talking about politics". Yes you can, and most of us did for decades.

@craigb79 It did have a lot of RPGs. Not as many as SNES, but definitely many many to choose from.

@-wc- I was actually scrolling, looking for this take. It always pops up eventually. I have sympathy for your sentiment, but your expectations don’t align with how language and words actually work. Languages are in a constant state of change, and the meaning of words are dictated by the masses, not by their original source. As you can see by the masses of comments and your solo dissent, the word “retro” as it relates to video game culture and discourse, does not actually fit the definition you are trying to pin to it. The word “retro” in this culture, is appropriately defined to simply mean “old” or of distant generations. That can be a new game that has the look and feel of older games (as in the traditional definition of the word), and it can also just mean a game that came out a long time ago.

In the past there were usually a few more voices that shared your belief, but as time moves on, those voices are becoming fewer and fewer. There is no doubt in current times, your definition is obsolete and the word now has new meaning. As someone who never stopped playing and buying NES games from when they were new, up until today, someone who has been deep in this culture long before the revival and popularity of replaying old games, frankly your version of the definition has been in the minority for decades now. It was common place more than 20 years ago to call games that actually released in the 80s, retro. In 2026 that is factually what the word means now.

-edit

After posting this I saw a comment here by an actual video game historian (I think he writes stories here sometimes too), who posted about working at Retro Gamer Magazine pre PS3 launch. Retro Gamer is a magazine about old video games. While I was reminiscing about the magazine I ended up on their Wikipedia page, and there happened to be a linked page to the term “retro gaming”. On the page Wikipedia page for “retro gaming”, they define the term as “ Retro gaming, also known as classic gaming and old school gaming, is the playing and collection of personal computers, consoles, and video games from earlier decades.”

I think that pretty much puts the final nail in the coffin on the definition of “retro” when it comes to video games.

Only hitch is, the murkyness of selling translations. I would be more open to it, if it came blank and you could load a translation on it. Just like a book, you can’t translate another author’s text and then make money off of it, unless you have a deal in place with that author or whoever owns the rights to the original text. Hope they don’t find themselves in legal troubles. It’s one thing to work on a project that you are passionate about and share it freely as a fan work with other people who are passionate… but when you start selling it on products that have your name printed on it, that’s when it becomes a business and a not so legal one.

It’s nice to have, but it is things like this that cause problems for the whole community, when the lawyers start jumping in or new laws start getting written up with stuff like this being used as proof of why corporations should get to take away our rights. Please don’t give these billion dollar companies the ammunition they need. Keep fan stuff, fan stuff.

@Sn0w It’s an ad. All ads are slop. The whole ad business has been slimy long before AI. Technology replaces jobs. It always has. This is just the latest internet bandwagon hate train. It’s getting so tiring seeing people on the internet constantly seek out things to rage over. This is coming from someone who doesn’t use AI or have any ties to it, just tired of the real slop.. human generated internet slop rage. It is consuming everything faster than AI and is seriously causing psychological harm to those who carry on with it.

@JayJ That is what has me scratching my head the most. How is a discord mod stomping their feet and walking out, in any way, newsworthy? I don’t care what the topic is. It’s like a food blog posting “McDonald’s manager quits job after 17 years because the new McWraps taste different.”. 🤷

@city952 technically the SNES can display more sprites than Genesis, but practically its about the same. SNES is handicapped by the fact that it can only display 256 sprite pixels per scanline. So unless you have a really unique specific use case for your sprites that keeps them spread out, you aren’t going to be able to utilize the 128 theoretical limit anyway. Most SNES games seem to have way more slow down than their Genesis counterparts (Street Fighter II for example), so it seems this pixel per scanline issue causes the SNES to have a real world lower spite limit.

Of course there are exceptions, like static screen puzzle games where certain sprites stay in a fixed position. This why SNES really leaned into RPGs and the Genesis strength was action and sports games. SNES with its colors could give you beautiful images, Genesis could move less beautiful images around more. Also a reason many games with a lot of large moving sprites (beat em ups were a genre heavily affected by this) had to have less simultaneous players or less enemies on screen.

As far as audio, I would rate them as equals in that category as well. Sure there were some bad eggs from western developers, but most Japanese developed games had amazing sound tracks on Genesis. Where they trade blows in quality vs range. SNES had a huge range of audio it could produce thanks to its use of sampling to produce sound. The draw back with audio sampling on the SNES is that the sounds had to be heavily compressed, resulting in technically low quality audio. Genesis on the other hand did not compress its audio at all because it was produced directly digitally from the synth chips. So it was able to get away with pure audiophile grade sound, but was heavily limited to the kinds of sounds it could produce.

@Damo not sure if you saw the comments yet, but this device is a couple years old.

Somewhere between Minecraft and a regular 3D game.

Hope it gets a 4:3 option. Be a shame to put in all that work with sprite limita, palette limit, and a CRT filter, just to have it squarer than a Game Boy screen.

@Carck I think the main issue is you reacted without knowing the most damning information that Sega was allowed to have their own private hires join the police raid, and you also reacted without knowing that the source for that information was the police themselves, not any party on the other side.

So it is odd that you jump to all these reactions and then accuse others of “fishing for reactions”. No one has to fish them out, you are all over the place reacting with reckless abandon jumping to conclusions without having the publicly available information. Coming up with your own theories of what happened and then accusing others of just following hearsay.

Definitely a bizarre take where you seem to be contradicting your own rules at every step. One could say your comments on this matter are a… “nothing burger”.

@RZ-Atom Depending on where you live the TOSA is meaningless. They are only viewable after the product is purchased and opened. That is like signing a contract and then after the fact, one party adds some new lines to the contract that you never agreed to. This is called shrink wrap licensing and it isn’t legally enforceable everywhere.

This is aside from the fact that even where enforceable, some video game products don’t follow the legal rules of those licenses (such as clearly noting on the outer packaging that the inside product contains an agreement).

And aside from the fact that many places do not allow the return and refund of opened video games, so if one were to actually read the TOSA it would be too late not to agree, which is is not only legally dubious, but just down right unethical.

I can’t see a logical reason to side with unethical practices like this other than fan boying, but I’m not sure that is even logical… especially given you would be campaigning against your own rights to support the rights of slimy practices of a multinational corporation. An odd position to take… I mean.. extremely odd.

@DadGamerUK Yup, @Damo should probably update the story. Nostalgia Nerd is behind it and it wasn't a troll.

I have beaten Whomp Em on the NES, so after reading this TE story, I looked up Saiyuuki World I on YouTube and it looks pretty darned fun. Is there anyway to play that game in the west? (outside of pirating)

@Daniel36 Yeah I remember noticing this too in the mid-late 90s. My mother had a Macintosh PowerPC and father had a Windows 95 machine. My parents had split and I lived with my dad. When I would visit my mother I would play games like Escape Velocity and Marathon, as well as all kinds of demos and shareware on Mac Addict disks, they felt totally different to what I was experiencing at home on my father’s PC. Eventually in 1999 I got my own Windows 98 eMachines and I would poke fun at my mother’s Mac all the time feeling Windows was superior. However by the mid 2000’s I found myself already missing the Mac experience and installing Sheep Shaver on my PC to relive thise experiences. I stayed with PC until 2020 and now I find myself back in the Mac world. The OS definitely still feels Mac, but the games today feel the same as on PC.

Is that DJ Slope in the Kickstarter video?

@Blast16 I think they just reduced themselves to sound effects. Switch has the click. Steam Deck kinda sounds like PS2 with some kinda of synth airy sound.

I just hope they don’t give it that 70s/early 80s paint job. Not sure what they were thinking with that as the Game Boy was a 90s system (released in 89), it had a 2 decade off Atari age visual design, bizarre, and imho ugly af.

There is also the issue of timing. Timing can never be accurate on software emulators because they are running on top of a foreign OS, which itself is running on top of foreign hardware. Software emulation is at the mercy of its host’s OS and hardware timing. It cannot be accurate in that sense.

Will there be an English translation?

@Slobbert Price and ease of use. The last time I checked a complete DIY MiSTer kit was almost $400, but that was a while ago, not sure if prices have come down.

Am I going too far in wishing there was a little speaker inside that emulated the sound of the laser moving back and forth?

@Dr_Lugae Sounds like the first gen Pokemon games that came out years later.

Imagine if this was all done as some super complex marketing scheme by Sega and anyone who put down for preorders is actually getting an officially licensed Sega FPGA. The timing of this with Sega officials saying they aren't doing retro console releases anymore.. it would be the ultimate "90's edgey Sega is back and we just trolled the world" stunt.

but seriously @damo you should consider not posting this guys correspondence anymore. He is either trolling for fun or trolling with malicious intent, but either way it is clear at this point that he is just stringing video game media outlets along as a play thing.

How much data is in an NFC scan? Wondering if entire NES ROMs could fit in one since they are so small. Would be cool thing rather than having to transfer it to the system via USB or SD.

@jesse_dylan I am also of the opinion sometimes the western dubs and scripts are better for English if you are going to listen in English. Sometimes I do want the authentic dialog, especially if I am really into it, simply because I want all the data, but I also enjoy the English re-written lines that are offered in the old western dubs. When I am really nerding out and want to know everything, I watch the Japanese audio and try to find the most accurate subtitles. I get the original personality of the character without it being lost when it is direct translated into an English dub.

It isn't a popular opinion, but I personally believe many of the older 90's dubs for games and anime are better than modern dubs that try to be accurate. Some people say the old dubs are cheesy, but I find them to have personality and be more realistic. Some modern anime I can't watch at all when dubbed, because it is so dry, it doesn't sound natural. People don't talk like that when naturally speaking English. Everything feels out of place. And it isn't nostalgia goggles, most of the 90's dubs I watched in my adult life. Pokemon and Sailor Moon were the only dubs I watched as a kid. Dragon Ball Z I was watching the English dub and the Japanese original audio at the same time period, as my friend was importing tapes so we could see the latest episodes.

It could just be a me thing, but original Japanese audio seems fun and full of life and the characters seem authentic and believable. When I go watch Old western English dubs for the first time, they feel fun and full of life and the characters seem authentic and believable. 90% of modern dubs feel sterile, and every modern anime I watch feels the same as every other modern anime... unless I watch the Japanese audio.

Of course there is exceptions to every rule, and I have seen some good modern anime in English and I have seen some ridiculously bad old dubs.

@GhaleonUnlimited Oh shoot I made a mistake. I just opened the app up, and it doesn’t have the Sega CD soundtrack as an option. It is 32bit or 64bit as options. It does have the Sega CD graphics as an option though, but only for menus.

-I guess I got confused because I was going back and forth between playing the Sega CD version on an emulator and the iOS version on my Mac at the same time.

Here’s the options for the iOS/MacOS version, with the Sega CD menu theme:

Someone must own the rights or at least is representing themselves as if they do and making contracts.

It was just this year that SoMoGa released Lunar on Android, and several years before they released it on iOS. It is not even just a straight port either, being somewhat of a remaster itself, using the PS1 Working Designs voice acting along side your choice of Sega CD graphics and music, or PS1 graphics and music. It also has a new menu system. You can choose the difficulty of the PS1 or Saturn version. You can set XP and money multipliers. You can turn off boss leveling, and other features I can’t remember off the top of my head.

Perhaps @damo can reach out to SoMoGa and see if they have any extra info. I have emailed them in the past and they respond.

-edit:
Seems as though some updates have already surfaced. So quick that I was still typing my original comment when it happened

If anyone is interested in making NES games right now with a drag and drop editor, “NESmaker” has been available for a few years. From what I hear it is a pretty stable tool that lets you do a lot of different genres.

@slider1983 yeah especially on Genesis/Mega Drive, 90% of the time the Western art was epic and the Japanese boxes were just doing the bare minimum to make a visual representation of the game/characters.