HoyeBoye

It had never occurred to me that “Crossing” was a reference to the train station.

@Leuke - Kinda hard not to think of the people whose whims can destabilize a civilization.

Oh wow! Following that dev on Itch. Looks like so much fun!

@hste You can listen to most (maybe all) of his albums directly on BandCamp. So the music is available digitally.

@axelhander Playdate is worth every penny if it speaks to you. It brings my broke-ass some joy and allows me to game while disconnecting from the internet. And it's about the price of a Sega Genesis + Everdrive Pro.
Crossing comment sections here, but Playdate also offers what the new Commodore is promising; a device that feels disconnected while still connecting a community.

Putting it on Playdate is the quickest way to get it off my backlog. Not sure if I’d like a point/click on the PD, but they could probably modify it a bit.

@BausRifle Dude, we ain’t getting THAT manufacturing back. We may get some chips and motors made here, but not bits of plastic with some basic electronics. Even with tariffs, that stuff is still cheaper made elsewhere.

@N64-ROX - Are you thinking about Strife?

I have no game gear nostalgia, and $300 sounds downright reasonable for that system. Unless motion blur is part of the charm?

The Earthbound Zero link above to the Starman.net forum is an interesting read. I’m combing through to figure out if they plan to tweak the game so it’s less of a grind.

This makes me realize how often I overlook SMS games. I think Bubble Bobble is the only one I have on my everdrive (soon to be joined by the Razing Core demo)

@slider1983 - I was a DOS kid, but didn’t have much money. So if there wasn’t a shareware demo of a game, I probably didn’t know about it.

Wow! That’s quite a list of port platforms! And yet I had never heard of this game.

Got it up and running today. Looks great! Gameplay-wise, it’s a solid beat em up.

Oooh! I do love plot in my SHMUPs! Even silly plots like the Battle Mania games. Adding this to my everdrive queue.

@WileyDragonfly - Ugh. Didn’t even spring for a Genesis mini? That is pretty sad.

I think they could’ve replaced Mario with Sonic and nobody would complain.

The KC location is a 5-minute walk from my house. It had been a Peter Piper Pizza, which was Chuck E Cheese’s attempt at a family style pizza place with good pizza and a mix of arcade games (2 pinball machines which were awesome). After 2 years, they turned it into a very small Chuck E Cheese where the games were all loud tickets for prizes machines. It’s been that way for about 8 months. Maybe this weekend, I’ll take a stroll down and see how the arcade-focused location is. Although, I’d rather walk an extra 10 minutes to a locally owned barcade.

Wonder if it’ll be designed with flash carts in mind, able to do Sega CD/32x games that way.

I got a sub to Sega Force Mega when that was running last year and it was so nice to just kick back and read an article here and there, away from a screen (no offense to this here fine on-screen establishment.)

This led me to look up if any AC mods existed for the GameCube version and I was shocked to see it’s all just texture maps and new villagers. I prefer AC GC over the others due to its simplicity, so it would be so cool to see it with some new festivals. Hopefully this decomp will make more in-depth mods easier.

Hope they don’t drop TOO much. I consider my copies of Knuckles Chaotix and Chibi-Robo to be part of my emergency fund.

Imagine spending a night at the office getting drunk with your colleagues, trying to one-up each other with the most messed up face on a character creator. Then the next morning, hungover, trying to BS a game concept to convince your boss they were intentional.

Impressive! Did the string of “E”s always appear when drifting? I don’t remember those.

More Um Jammer Lammy!

Anyone remember an Usagi Yojimbo game for DOS/PC? I have a vague memory of playing a game based on the character at a friend’s house, but he only had PCs. Probably early 90s. Internet search is only coming up with this game, the TTRPG, and the 2013 game.

@Sketcz Wasn’t the Kinect a pack-in at a certain point? I thought the original concept was great, but execution and the always-on nature turned me off.
People at my local hackerspace turned one into a large-scale 3d scanner that worked surprisingly well.

@romanista - You and others have made some arguments in favor of bullet hells not being that difficult, and I’m willing to give em a go. What would you recommend as a good example to try out (ideally on Switch so I can try it out)?

@Razieluigi - Couldn’t agree more. I realized I actually enjoy shmups a few months ago via Voidblazers, a rather gentle narrative-driven shmup on Playdate. Since getting engrossed in it, so much of my gaming time has been devoted to the genre. Prior to Voidblazers, my exposure was modern bullet-hells that felt needlessly punishing. I’m glad there’s a label for them so I can avoid them, and that people who love em can find em.

@Daniel36 - It feels so much like parody. Not great parody, but they know it’s a joke.

Burger Time fatality?! Pepper to the face? Crushed by a tomato slice? Stabbed by a walking fried egg?
UPDATE: Just watched the video. 12:30 man gets crushed by burger, layer by layer.

Commercially stable and independent have become increasingly rare. Even Hookshot Media has a “Partnership” with IGN. Not sure of the details of this, but I’d be curious to know more info.
The Axe of the Bloodgod RPG podcast went independent after USGamer.net closed, so I hope the trend of journalists going independed becomes the new trend as corporate-owned websites are shuttered because they aren’t profitable enough.

“When men and women go down the pub and talk about what happened to them in a game without boring the pants off everyone else, then the medium will have begun to mature."
This is a great benchmark!

Hats off to this dude. Some people would learn the lesson that rules don’t apply to them, but he recognized the inconsistency of the legal system and counts himself lucky. Hope he succeeds with this endeavor.

“…the company ended up being shuttered in 2023, as part of a larger restructuring within its parent company, Embracer Group.”
I feel like this sentence gets used a lot to wrap up studio histories.

Michael Bay was wandering around LA with an untitled car-chase movie script in hand searching for funding. One block away, a Sega producer with a briefcase full of IP was walking about in search of a script. They both turn a corner and collide. Papers fly everywhere. They begin picking up papers and their hands both touch on the same pile of papers; an OutRun flyer laid askew across the untitled script. And that’s how terrible movies get made.

There’s a Hallmark (greeting card) store here in Kansas City that used to carry shareware games on 5 1/4” floppy in the early 90s. Pretty sure that’s where we bought Commander Keen. This story makes me think there’s a slim chance I can poke around that store and fine a few floppies. Maybe some in the back room or between some store fixtures.

@Vectrex - “Too much of a hipster gimmick console”
We PD users prefer the term “niche console.” 😆

If we use the engineering definition of quality, it’s poor in that the devices are inconsistent. Some are dependable and some are lemons. Panic recently switched factories, so hopefully quality will improve. My playdate is from the original batch and is still going strong. Looking forward to the season 2 games.

@littlemisskittn As an American, I agree with every word you said. Treat us like a petulant toddler, don’t give in, and wait out our tantrum. We’ll either learn and get better, or hold our breaths too long, pass out, hit our head, and die.

I had all the shareware compilation CDs back then and I somehow managed to never play this game. I feel like it hit all the Apogee games, but I guess there are still gaps.

When it comes to input, the Hackaday article says “give a Sega Saturn keyboard…” How does that work? Is there a Saturn to DE-9 adapter? I have never seen a computer keyboard for Genesis/MD.

@slider1983 TG Jones is WH Smiths younger, cooler cousin. He’s hip with all the kids, wears a leather jacket, and is rad AF!

$6 for a couch co-op switch game? Yes please!

@Crecca - Buy one for $300k, then spend $3m to have a team of programmers make a kickass 16-bit RPG for it. I can get behind this dream.

@PZT - woah! I had never seen that before! I now want an Atari or mega-drive cart (has to be top-loaded) that looks like a riverboat paddle wheel with 8 carts, each paddle it’s own game.

I dunno. Looking at that screenshot of nightmare jagged Crash, maybe it needs to go back to oblivion.

@Shiryu - Thank you for explaining. That sounds extremely maddening. I’m pretty weak when it comes to fighting games so there no way i would get through to the ending. Looking forward to your video.

@Shiryu - can you explain to me what a single frame move execution system is. I searched the internet but only found basic explanations of frames.

@sdelfin - That may be my best bet. I probably won’t be able to make time for the game anyway.

Don’t love wrestling games, but I do love Suda51’s work. So torn!