FeRDNYC

@OorWullie I doubt anyone who didn't experience it at the time can really appreciate what an earth-shaking revelation Speedball 2 was when it came out. What Bitmap Brothers achieved with that game's code, anyone would've sworn was impossible right up to the moment they saw it for themselves.

The exactly right-sized dimensions of the game arena, with the panning/scrolling top-down view locked on to the eponymous speedball, able to cover all of the action in precisely the detail required. The deceptively-simple gameplay, which let you focus on just keeping the ball moving so matches would become frantic and intense as they picked up momentum. And most of all, the sheer SPEED the whole thing ran at, never lagging or glitching no matter how much was happening on-screen or how fast the focus of play was moving from one section of the arena to another.

They must've marshaled the Amiga's entire multimedia chipset together, and coded directly to each of the processors in order to squeeze that kind of performance out of the platform.

And I can still hear the opening title theme in my head, gronking out the tune in notes that sound like someone prying open a steel door with a crowbar.

@Hookedonmarvel Capcom talked Marvel out of that rule. They argued the restriction would be a problem in a fighting game. But it's an example of the crazy rules Marvel tried to impose on their game design, for the early titles.

I really don't think it even had all that much to do with the money, directly. I suspect if Marvel was rigid with Capcom in the beginning, the most likely explanation is that they simply didn't trust Capcom. Didn't trust them to make a Marvel universe fighting game, as opposed to a fighting game with Marvel characters skinned in. That surely would've been a very real concern, giving a license to a company with a history of producing fighting games, but no experience whatsoever with the Marvel character roster.

Then, after Capcom had put out a couple of games that were well-received, moved good numbers, and were respectful of the IP, Marvel no longer had to worry that they were going to release a game where Storm jumps around the screen doing Chun Li's helicopter kick, or Spider-Man is launching Hadoukens at his opponents.

(So, yeah, indirectly it was about the money — the games sold well, which served as an indication that Capcom knew what they were doing and weren't screwing up Marvel's IP.)

@1234five And in just 6 more years, the Ultimate universe would kick off. At that point, before you could even discuss whether Marvel was adhering to canon, you'd first have to ask "WHICH canon?".

Did IBM release any PS1 titles? (They didn't, of course.) Because, while their manuals would never win the "heaviest" competition, they'd easily walk away with the title of "densest".

For decades, the standard-form IBM product manual — hardware or software, be it for a mainframe system, a ThinkPad, or the copy of PC/DOS installed on an XT desktop — was a paperbound booklet containing pages of literal tissue paper, just the thinnest sheets you'll ever find used for actual reading material, onto which are printed detailed instructions for the product, repeating again and again in every language for all the countries/regions where the product would ever be sold.

I remember I bought an Asus LCD monitor around 2009 that came with an IBM-style printed manual. The instructions ran only 8 pages, including safety warnings. (Because, monitor... and not even one with speakers or multiple ports.) But the book was still as thick as a short novel, because those 8 pages repeated in THIRTY-SEVEN different languages!

I was amused by "PAL-hours" as well, nicely done @KingMike.

However, if I had to hazard a guess, one possibility is that the 50 minutes represents actual playtime (meaning, time actively engaged with a game), which would be expected to take about an hour of real-world time — the other 10 minutes being spent roaming among the cabinets seeking your next challenge.

That's assuming they have some sort of system for tracking playtime, and don't just give you 50 minutes on a wall clock. Which is admittedly a big assumption.

The Occam's Razor version of things is that they just chintz you with 50 minutes of real-world time for your money instead of a full hour. The same way gasoline (petrol) — at least in the US — is priced per 9/10 of a gallon. It's a racket the entire industry is in on, and we don't even question it because it's "always" been that way.

@cdog555 It did attempt to deny it, if you speak supply-chain. "New old stock" is SUPPOSED to mean that the components sourced are brand new, but had been manufactured in the past and were sitting in a warehouse unsold.

That being said, looking at the photos of opened carts I think he's lying.

@dmcc0 Applying the "Assume Good Faith" principle, I don't think the implication here is that it's ok to attack big corporations. Rather, it's not unreasonable to expect that corporate suppliers should have the resources to meet high demand without delays or scarcity games. If they DON'T, it's still wrong to attack them, but not to at least call them out for apparently not knowing how to do their entire jobs.

When something is created by a small/independent designer working with limited resources, it's not even fair to EXPECT that of them, never mind attacking them for falling to meet our unreasonable expectations.

@RootsGenoa OMG, thank you for knocking loose the ancient memory that the European turtles weren't even Ninjas.