ok I guess this is a silly thing to say, but ... ... .... can't you just.... ... use a PlayStation 2? if you want to play a PS2 disc you have?

@Sketcz
Oh, nice one, thanks. Apologies if I sounded indignant.

I love the six default music tracks (and the adorable tutorial song) but the actual gameplay of Vib-Ribbon isn't super amazing to me.
It's cool to see it generate level layouts from a music CD, but I don't feel like it does a great job at actually matching the music. It kind of feels like the magic happens in the player's head more than what the actual game is doing.

But I still have a strong adoration for Vib-Ribbon despite this. I think the strength of the minimalist character design and the charm of the six default songs is enough for me to love it.

@h3s

Hm. it seems that Playdate was primarily made for an audience of tech enthusiasts and tech-savvy people, huh.
I only bought one because I wanted to play games that use a silly crank controller. ...Do you really need to be someone who understands this kind of stuff in order to be the target audience for this thing?

All I want as a customer is a device that functions properly. And hearing about things like "make sure to update your firmware or you literally won't be able to access the web shop on this digital-only device" makes the product sound like a complete failure of functionality to me.

@slider1983
Genuinely, yes. It's horrible.

Sonic 06 still has something I would call level design in it. Forces doesn't really manage to achieve even that.

...i'm gonna have to spend a day charging it first lol. Wow this thing was not as cool as I was hoping it would be. It's super uncomfortable ergonomically, and build quality doesn't seem too great either. ...I got a squeaky D-pad.
And now we have a doomsday calendar to contend with too? Why is that even a thing?

I'm really curious about when these "worst times" were. Was it Sonic the Hedgehog 2006, Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric, or Sonic Forces? Or could it even be earlier with the cancellation of Sonic X-Treme?

A while ago I played Lufia 1 and thought it was okay but generic, and rather flawed in some areas. It felt like a Dragon Quest clone that wasn't as good as any Dragon Quest. And it gets rather frustrating at some points too.

I wanted to play it because I knew that Lufia II was the real star of the show, but I haven't gotten around to Lufia II yet.
It's nice to see these games are actually getting a re-release, that's cool.

With this and Terranigma being announced, I wonder if Clear River Games has got more SNES classics up their sleeve? Secret of Evermore would be a perfect candidate for a new release in this same vein.

ok, as a huge Castlevania nerd, I've always been side-eyeing this game from a distance, wanting to know what it was like, but being completely unwilling to subscribe to an Apple service in order to try it.
This is actually the best case scenario, hopefully the archive gets a PC version so I can try it.

I have the 32X cartridge for this game, but my Sega 32X itself stopped working some time ago. ...and I didn't particularly feel like hunting down another one.

Okay I'm back after having played and beaten Battle of Olympus on emulator.

It was really good!

Being used to games like Simon's Quest where the NPC hints are kind of impossible to make sense of, I was actually quite surprised at how useful the NPC hints are in this game. I was able to find specific invisible hidden doors and figure out where to go pretty much entirely by myself. All I had to do was actually pay attention to and note down what NPCs had to say. I even found the hidden flask you get from hitting a nondescript pillar completely by intuition.
The one item I had to resort to a guide to find was one health upgrade, where you have to hit a specific tree in a specific spot. I knew there was something in the trees since multiple NPCs mentioned it, but I could not for the life of me find which tree it was. ...

The layout of the world is tricky enough to get lost in, but small and distinct enough to be able to find your way around. Each area feels very distinct. I think it's quite well designed for this type of game.

And it's actually quite difficult! The birds that drop rocks and the jumping monkeys are especially problematic.
I enjoy how there are little tricks you can use. For example, if an enemy drops an item, if you don't pick it up, then it prevents the enemy from respawning until you leave the screen (or accidentally pick it up). This actually helps a ton on those screens with the infinitely-respawning birds that drop rocks. And for all the annoying snakes too.
Overall it's not too bad once you get the double-strength, double-defense, and all the HP upgrades. the final area was tough, but manageable with all of the upgrades in the game.
The final boss was really cool, with you having to look at the reflection in the water in order to fight an invisible opponent.

The one aspect of the game I was not too hot on was having to grind money to pay NPCs for items. You can only hold 99 money, and some of them ask for 80. And you lose half when you die... In order to get all the items and beat the game, you end up having to grind a lot. There is also a point where you must grind 20 salamander skins, and these enemies only appear in a single room in the whole game.
But overall it wasn't too bad actually, it just felt a bit unnecessary.

I also wish that some of the NPCs repeated their hints instead of just saying "There is no more I can tell you". I managed to remember everything important, but things like this can lead to players having to resort to guides, since there are a lot of small details to remember. ...

Also, you only get six letters to name Orpheus??? I had to call him "Orpheu" lol.

Overall, great game!!! I was impressed! It feels better than Simon's Quest, I like it more than Rygar, and it might be on par with Faxanadu. ...I still think Zelda II is overall better, but still, this one's a good one.

If this remake comes to Switch, I shall check it out. I probably won't want to play it again on Steam.
I hope they add some new features such as the ability to put the gravity sandals controls on a different button rather than it being on the regular jump button.

I've had this game on my to-play list for a while.

Lately, in-between all the must-play new releases (Rhythm Paradise Groove, Splatoon Raiders, Adventures of Elliot, Mina the Hollower.... waaah, too much to get through in such short succession!!), I've been playing older games on emulator here and there as palate-cleansers.
And I was seriously considering starting up Battle of Olympus just a few days ago actually, but instead I opted to play E.V.O.: Search for Eden instead. ........this news is making me want to play Battle of Olympus next, though, for sure.

@Deway

don't forget the cognitive dissonance of trying to defend the company's use of AI while also having to agree with their official statement that no AI was used for this game.

I genuinely don't understand the point of ai-generating assets for an already existing game. ... just use the original assets???

it would be nice if this collaboration also led to them updating Atari 50 with these Activision games too.

I wonder in which way the game will be altered? That line about it not being the same has me a bit worried.

If they are changing the game, then...
I hope that the equipping system is streamlined. I want to be able to equip more items at once.

The game has a weird quirk where the unpausing animation forces Ark to face south, so if you cast a spell from the menu, Ark will only be able to fire it downwards, which is silly.

I want to be able to use magic in more bosses. Bloody Mary requires magic to beat, but up until that point, the vast majority of bosses restrict magic, so using magic doesn't come naturally.

There was a single Magirock that was removed from the localised version (there are 97 magirocks total in JP version, 96 total in PAL version). I hope the removed one is restored.

And...... I hope they don't mess too much with the game other than small adjustments like this.

I returned to this article after having now played Suikoden II, and I was once again taken aback by just how genuinely awful this article's spoiler warning is.

Putting a spoiler in the spoiler warning itself is just about the number one most disrespectful place you could possibly put it.

@Sketcz could you please do something about this. It put me off reading this article, and it will definitely put me off wanting to recommend it to Suikoden fans who haven't played FF7 (my sister in law for example)

@Deusfaux
random can mean "selected via chance", but it can also mean "out of nowhere" or "out of the blue".

for example, one can say "this guy randomly came up to me and said he liked my jacket". and of course it was not purely random, it was a specifically motivated interaction. but colloquially, random can have this meaning.

so "random game saturday" can mean, let's talk about a game that we don't have any other reason to talk about other than we felt like it.

Are they going to be calling it League-Man in all regions? I wonder if they are worried about trying to trademark the name "Bat Man" for a new release, lol

I have a reproduction copy of the game. Not a genuine one. Still, I adore the game and I'm glad I was able to play it on my SNES.

For modern players, this game poses a problem that a new re-released version could address:

If you want to play it in English, you're gonna have to play a squished 50hz version. And if you want to play in 60hz, it'll be in Japanese. ...

I do hope that if a new version comes out, it doesn't just compile the two existing roms and leave it at that. I'd like them to put some work in to make a nice-playing English version.

yup, the Oracles were my favourite childhood Zelda games back in the day, I knew everything about them front to back. Always was kinda weird the shop remains closed in the Virtual Console versions.

I even remember naive teenage me emailing nintendo customer support about the lack of advance shop in the VC versions, and their response was surprisingly helpful, they said to use a password at vasu's snake that will add the advance ring to my ring inventory.

...Which, I guess requires finding like a code generator online, so it still required some digging around, but it was a surprisingly good response that actually does help a player who wants the ring on the VC version

Even this "failure" of a Zelda game is still miles better and more fun as a videogame than many many other Famicom games. Even at their "worst", Nintendo still cared about the fun factor first and foremost. (And I don't even agree Zelda II is bad. I think it's great)

....and I'd also say it's better than several modern Nintendo games that don't seem to catch as much negativity as Zelda II.
(I will argue that Princess Peach Showtime is one of Nintendo's worst games they've ever made, but nobody seems to care about hating on this one 🤷‍♂️)

Her music is legendary.

Castlevania music is very important to the series' identity, so Belmont's Curse has a lot to live up to without Yamane. Let's hope it turns out great.

It's a good game.

I don't know if this is unpopular to say, but I don't feel like the simcity aspect of it really amounts to much tbh - there really is only one way for things to pan out: you just expand to all the available tiles, get rid of all the monsters, and there ya go - it's the same outcome every time, which kinda undermines the idea of a sim game, in which you're supposed to be able to build things how you like it.

The sim stuff is a fun break from the sidescrolling action though - I'm not saying it's not good, I'm just saying that I don't think it's all that meaningful to refer to it as a sim game, I guess.

The remake version that added tower defense was interesting too, but I feel like the tower defense stuff stole the show and upstaged the regular sidescrolling action to the point where the sidescrolling stages feel kind of out of place in a game that otherwise takes place largely in the sim viewpoint. The balance was a bit out of wack.

The sequel ActRaiser 2, which was pure sidescrolling, was so fiendishly difficult I could not finish it. ...and I'm someone who has finished every Castlevania game. It really is impossibly difficult. I managed to reach a tower level that has a boss rush at the end, and no matter how many attempts I gave it, I always got wrecked by the boss rush. And apparently there's a second boss rush in the level afterwards...

For whatever reason I do actually own a Super Famicom cartridge of Lady Stalker. I never made it very far into the game though.
I was not expecting a new game in the series at all. That's pretty cool.

out of all 80s computer hardware, the NES is arguably the one that has "gone on forever" the most of them all.

@Thad
maybe they did mean Plutonic as in Pluto, god of the underworld. Try and figure out how that fits in haha.

I just finished playing Shining The Holy Ark a few days ago. I was actually quite impressed with how distinct each dungeon felt - i'm used to oldschool dungeon crawlers feeling rather repetitive, but this one was a lot more interesting than I was expecting. Each dungeon does have a distinct personality, including one where you get to walk around on the ceiling??? Cool stuff.

I did get extremely impatient with how slow the enemy encounters play out though. I used emulator speedup a lot during battles.
And I did have to use a guide to find some of the pixies.

I don't have much experience with the Shining series aside from this. It looks like a very all-over-the-place kind of series, kind of difficult to grasp. I may try out some of the others here and there.

@HammerGalladeBro Ah, in that case then it must have just been on my mind regardless. Maybe I had seen the writing on the walls since Switch was a runaway success that 3DS was probably not going to be supported for too much longer.

in 2021, I bought a New 3DS XL for £119 on eBay. I bought it in order to do a system transfer because my existing New 3DS XL (which I got alongside Majora's Mask 3D back in 2015) was developing d-pad problems, and I wanted to be able to do a system transfer before it became potentially impossible. I don't remember when the 3DS eShop closure was announced - maybe it was the announcement that kicked me into gear to get it sorted.

So now here I am, with a nicely functioning New 3DS XL, and a dodgy New 3DS XL, and I'm keeping both lol.
Hopefully some day I can get my dodgy D-pad fixed by someone who knows how to mod 3DSes, but as it is now, it's still functional for games that don't require precise D-pad inputs. I'm okay with this.

Spyro Year of the Dragon also had first-person shooter sections, and it came out one month earlier than Banjo-Tooie. Is this just a coincidence that two collectathon series decided to add FPS levels at around the same time? Seems weird.

Hmm. Playdate wasn't as interestingas I was hoping. The console's ergonomics are awful to me, with the sharp edges and squeaky D-pad.
The one game that truly made the thing worth it was Crankin's Time Travel Adventure, which really delighted me in its ridiculousness and clever use of the crank controls. But I kind of lost interest in the whole thing before all of my Season One games arrived. So I don't even know what all of them are like.

Maybe I will find it and recharge its battery and try it again one of these days.

this is such a nothing article. "Person who doesn't follow videogames only knows about what was popular when they were younger"

I want to know if there will be an option for a TV play mode where you can just wear some oldschool red/blue glasses to get the 3D effect. That's how I played Wario Land VB on emulator.
If Nintendo literally forces you to use the accessory to play and doesn't let the app launch in TV mode, something is seriously wrong with them.

This isn't my favourite of the 16-bit vanias (Rondo and Bloodlines beat it for me personally) but it's definitely an important entry in the series. And Simon's Theme can't be beat.

My biggest issue with the gameplay is that, it's mostly pretty easygoing, until you reach the later levels that introduce so many one-hit-kill spikes. It's a huge jump in difficulty that doesn't feel congruent with the rest of the game.

I also do remember not enjoying the rotating room because it's mostly just sitting there on a hook waiting for the room to finish rotating. Kind of a pace breaker imo.

I didn't get a chance to get the Puyo game, seems like it's gone completely now. Oh well. Not like I haven't played Puyo 1 already, the Sega Ages version isn't going anywhere

Toby Fox's infamous "Halloween Hack" used the protagonist of Brandish in it, right? I've been meaning to check the Brandish series out lol. ... ... I also do like playing and discovering old RPGs, it's not just the deltarune obsession getting to me.

Anyway. Thanks for the heads up. I just bought both games, might try out Brandish later.

...Interesting. I played Croc on the GBC when I was little. It was okay but not as good as the main PC/Console version of Croc, which in itself is fondly-remembered but nothing special nowadays.

I can only imagine that this means that Croc 2 (and its corresponding GBC game) will also get the remaster treatment? I can't imagine Croc GBC is a higher priority than Croc 2 following the remaster.

(...and how about those j2me "Croc Mobile" games too, huh? lol jk. Maybe they could chuck 'em in as a museum bonus feature for good measure or somthing)

My Gamepad battery is fine for the moment. I still have it plugged in charging too... is keeping it plugged in all the time good or bad for battery life, I wonder?

Since when the heck buying a product sold in another country is illegal?

The only part of Sonic Superstars that was fun to play was maybe the earlier parts before they introduced all the un-fun gimmicks, and then the one boss that was literally just Fantasy Zone, because Fantasy Zone is great. The entire rest of the game was awful awful awful.

Why do you mention the GBA port, but then make no mention of whether or not an equivalent code exists in that version? What's the point in bringing it up at all?

Croc was my first 3D game ever. I loved it a lot despite how rough it was. The awkward "tank controls" didn't really affect me that much because I played the Windows version on a keyboard, and using the arrow keys felt natural enough to a kid who had never used an analogue stick anyway.

I never got into Croc 2 though. But I did have the Game Boy Color version of Croc. I hope that this remastered version includes the GBC version as a bonus, haha.

@PKDuckman

I know that the English is different in Splatoon for Wii U.
USA version added personality to the localisation, while PAL version was more accurate to Japanese. One example is that Captain Cuttlefish says his favourite snack is "crabby cakes" in USA, and "biscuits" in PAL. And Spyke does not talk with an exaggerated British accent in the PAL version

Why is this the first I'm hearing of a Gimmick sequel???
I love that game. I even got the LRG version that comes with the Yumetaro plushie.
I hope the sequel will be a good game.

As for not contacting the original creator.... I dunno. ...I don't think it's that huge of a deal to be honest - if he left the game industry then he's not going to be involved with the development, right? But I can see the other side of the argument too, it would have been a nice courtesy to at least let him be involved in its announcement and things like that.

I recently managed to acquire a Sega cartridge for this game but have not gotten around to trying it out yet. ...Judging from the comments, it looks like my best bet would be to just play the Sega version rather than get the EGG Console version.

I find things like this kind of pointless tbh. Why do you need to run a Famicom rom on a Super Famicom if the game is the same? I can understand it better if they wanted to make a All-Starslike version with all new 16-bit visuals and sound, but just literally getting a Famicom rom running on a Super Famicom with no changes doesn't seem to actually accomplish anything...? Am I missing something

I wish the game ratings board people weren't such prudes. I don't think Mai is any worse than anything that's already in the game. :/

I'm already familiar with all the other versions of Ys II but I might get this just to try out the PC-88 original. Don't need language if I already know the game, eh?
But yes, it's a shame that there isn't currently an English version of Ys I & II on Switch. the TG-16 version would be ideal, but the more modern I & II Chronicles would also be very welcome.

But hey, I'm all for them releasing as many PC-88 games as possible on Switch. Even if that means that some of them might be super niche without language options.

@Bod2019
Honestly, no clue.
https://www.bitmapbooks.com/blogs/news/the-unofficial-md-gen-a-visual-compendium
This page is all the information I have.