JJtheTexan

@NatiaAdamo oh! I didn't know that... if they're going for authenticity, then bring on the weird grammar lol

Packaging with phrases like "BRING A REAL VECTREX AT HOME" and "MINI ARCADE PLAY HOME" does not inspire much confidence.

The "16-bit trilogy" of Super Castlevania IV, Bloodlines, and Rondo of Blood are among my favorite games. I cannot choose a favorite from among those three; all are equally-great and unique to me!

Next time: BBC marks the 25th anniversary of PlayStation 2 in Europe with a Dreamcast taped to a Nintendo 64 that has a PSP sticking out of its cartridge slot

Crossover DLC in both games seems inevitable at this point, and I am absolutely here for it

@PKDuckman true. I have Silpheed and Zanac. Loved Silpheed in spite of its 15fps performance. Zanac is good but the lack of sound effects is not great in a shoot-'em-up.

@LinktotheFuture EGGCONSOLE is a series of games for 1980s Japanese home computers, like the MSX2 and the PC-88 series, emulated on Nintendo Switch. I have a couple of them and they're very interesting, but definitely show their age. Most don't have English translations, so they can be tough to play if you can't read Japanese.

I backed this on Kickstarter and was sad for years about its apparent abandonment / cancelation. We'll never get to play it in any form unless someone leaks the build (if it even exists)

I really like the look of this one! Looking forward to future updates...

We truly live in the worst timeline.

It's like the old joke about the British guy who tells a friend he took his wife to a large Caribbean island.

The friend asks, "Jamaica?"

The Brit replies, "Nah mate, she came of her own accord"

(See also: Led Zeppelin song title D'yer Mak'er)

Ohhhh, this hurts. I've bought a number of items from RCG over the years.

(clears throat) The current geopolitical situation with respect to international import / export costs must surely be to blame, at least in part. Sigh

"All the bells and whistles" except for "being a finished product you can buy" and "playing games for the largest region with the most manufactured cartridges."

I jest. It looks extremely cool. I wish this was something a manufacturer could create.

I would love to see an adaptation of Duke Nukem that both preserves the 1990s edgy misogyny and also puts it in a modern context, where the humor is that Duke is basically a big dork and he keeps getting in trouble for it.

Also Jon St. John absolutely, positively must voice Duke. Anyone else and it's not Duke Nukem.

Reminder that Dig Dug has some truly out-there official, canon lore, including that the main character from the original game, Taizo Hori, is the divorced father of Susumu Hori, the player character from Mr. Driller.

In this week's Retro XP newsletter, Marc Normandin writes about Solar Assault, the 3D Gradius spinoff Konami released for arcades in 1997. I really hope Hamster will be adding this to the future list of Arcade Archives 2 releases. It certainly holds up better than some of this early 1980s stuff like Strategy X.

As an American, I feel like UK gaming history took place in an alternate timeline where everyone is nostalgic for the Zed Ecks Speccy's astonishing ability to display up to three colours and play legendary games with titles like Biggums Goes to Rhodesia and Alistair the Badger's Adventures in a Car Park

I have a hunch they'll work with Limited Run or someone like that to produce a console-compatible trackball controller.

Worth mentioning Mr. Simpson is one of the designers of the Commander X16, a Commodore-inspired DIY / hobby microcomputer he helped create with fellow YouTuber The 8-Bit Guy. The original backers got theirs a couple of years ago, but as far as I can tell it's no longer available for purchase.

One of my elementary school friends had an Atari ST at home, and I was regularly invited to visit and play games on it. He only had a few titles: Star Raiders, Buggy Boy, and Time Bandit. I had never played games on anything other than my NES at the time, and I was enthralled by the superior graphics and gameplay on just those three games.

I remain very fond of the system's keyboard-and-case design, especially those rhombus-shaped function keys, and the charming Windows-like OS with a "busy bee" replacing the mouse cursor whenever it needed a moment to launch something.

@Damo I just want to know where you got that GOREGOUS custom GBA shell and what I assume is an IPS screen

@Quick_Man came here to say the same thing. What a bizarre and unfortunate choice.

Get in the robot, Shinji!

The relentless pursuit of pachinko ruined Konami. Hopefully this is the start of a return to the development of quality games for people who don't find entertainment in staring at ball bearings bouncing around under glass.

That's great. Meanwhile, I am still waiting on my orders of Eschatos, Steel Empire Chronicles, and Puzzle Bobble: Everybubble! from Strictly Limited. It will be TWO YEARS and counting as of next month on the first two games.

I have the original Defender model and I love it. Best PS2 / PS3 controller I've ever used.

If anyone at Hamster reads this, PLEASE work with Taito to resurrect this lost classic!

The visuals remind this old-timer of the "Macventure" point-and-click dungeon crawlers on the original monochrome Apple Macintosh computers, like Shadowgate and Deja Vu. I quite like it!

"Limited Run Games will be handling the distribution of physical copies of Earth."

Great, now they're selling copies of entire planets. When will it end? xD

I guess it dovetails nicely into the release of Ridge Racer on NS2 (and maybe PS5?) on June 5.

Lest we forget the first huge RPG hit in Japan was The Black Onyx, developed by Henk Rogers. (Though he was living in Japan at the time, so was it a Japanese game?)

I'm a sucker for this sort of thing, especially since Windows 3.11 was the OS on my first PC. Now I just want Windows 95 for Nintendo 64 xD

@Kushan I was a teenager when Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov and I remember it being huge international news. It's astonishing that almost 30 years later we have more powerful chess engines running on hardware that costs a few hundred dollars

The thing about "AI" chess models is that they are already obsolete. The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue beat a grandmaster in 1997. Modern dedicated chess engines can calculate tens of thousands of possible moves in seconds and are effectively unbeatable by humans.

You can't please everyone, especially with topics like this, but thank you for the fair and reasonable explanation of the situation, and for following up on the issues raised by commenters last year.

@buzzdennis I thought so. I hired a modder to do something very similar with mine and it works great. Still gives me an intense headache after 15 minutes or so x/

Shenmue isn't even in the top 100 most-influential games. What titles were directly inspired by Shenmue besides Shenmue 2 and 3?

I absolutely wanted one until I saw the price. Yeesh!

As mentioned, most of the heavy hitters on Apple Arcade eventually make their way to other platforms. I'll happily wait and play this in 2026 or whenever the exclusivity deal expires.

I'm being petty here, but that AI-generated thumbnail for the video is hurting my brain

@Blast16 Retro-Bit is manufacturing the cartridges. I've bought several reproduction games from them, and none had any problems. They've had some sketchy "micro-console" releases in the past, but they've been mostly solid the last ten years or so.

Would I love to own one, especially with English menus? Yes, absolutely.

Would I pay roughly the same price as a PlayStation 5 Pro for one? Not in a million years

Looking back at American video game TV ads, it seems like nobody really understood how to effectively advertise games... ever? Okay, that's not entirely true... SEGA did.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, early gaming ads were primarily aimed at families. When I was growing up (1980s-1990s), they were geared almost exclusively at boys ages 8 to 14, with an emphasis on action / power fantasy / doing EXTREME stuff.

Of course SEGA came along in 1989 or so with its memorable "Genesis Does" campaign, arguably the best and most-effective video game TV commercials ever, at least in the USA.

@JackGYarwood @Damo if you haven't done one already, I would love to see a future Time Extension feature on the history (histories) of video game TV ads in the USA, UK, and elsewhere!

Apparently the previous model wasn't "ultimate" after all

Sold. Looks amazing!

Kind of hard to swallow, though I guess if you really want to play KoF 98 online, I suppose this is the best way to do that.

I appreciate publishers like Ratalaika digging into the deep trove of Super Famicom games that never left Japan. This looks pretty decent. I would have preferred they kept the original title, but I guess they were going for that "what if this was localized in the 1990s?" vibe.

I lived alone most of my adult life, so I rarely had anyone around who would play with me. I live with my girlfriend now, but she is exclusively a 4X PC gamer and is not interested in local multiplayer. I can't win!

Fortunately, most of the games I enjoy and prefer are single-player experiences.

The amount of effort that has gone into this endeavor is incredible. I sincerely hope they succeed!

@slider1983 it isn't. That's just what this doofus priced theirs at. When you look at the prices of sealed copies of this game that actually sold on eBay, they average less than $100.

A game is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it!