JackGYarwood

@icon182 I'd definitely be up for looking into this. It should be pretty easy to find people who were around back then. Maybe the hook could be looking into the UK launch of a particular console post-2000 and some of the stunts/promotions they did.

@Uncle_Franklin Strangely, this is the second retro article I've written where Monkhouse's name came. He apparently did a corporate gig for Ocean Software in London a few years before this.

@PopetheRev28 That's not what he's saying. People on Twitter/X are suggesting Ishizawa-san's strong reaction is because he's Japanese, but he's simply pointing out a fact: companies are within their rights to shut down these projects anywhere where copyright law exists, including America or the UK.

It's just that I think in the West, we're used to a lot of companies turning a blind eye to this stuff, more so than in Japan. It sucks that the project was taken down, but it's understandable, and I hope the team goes on to do more great work.

@Bot_Bot_69 True. The weird thing was that I showed them the image of the Game Boy and guessed it was probably Tetris, having read his book. But that part of the question was kind of ignored.

@CookieByte I remember getting the DS game Dead Man's Chest for Christmas one year. It was pants! Considering how well the Pirate fantasy lends itself to games, I always found it strange how the best POTC stuff is still the crossovers with other properties (Sea of Thieves/Kingdom Hearts). Still disappointed Armada of the Damned got cancelled.

@gmar We've crossposted the news from NL, so it should be on the home page, like any other news story.

@smoreon Thanks for flagging. Fixed!

@h3s That was the case with ReXGlue recomps for Xbox 360, but the recent Blue Dragon recomp features a native renderer

I'm wondering if this has something to do with that Atari X Activision thing that Brickcraft sent out. That would fit with the "game shelf" bit, but would fall pretty short of "one of the biggest announcements" they've ever made.

@gmar I've amended to include "other parts of Asia". Cheers for flagging.

@Shaw_Brothers I was going to say it would be a good idea for them to add more dates and do a tour. But considering the free food/drinks and goodie bags, I imagine the cost would be shockingly high to do more than one date.

@Slider2711 Thank you for the correction! I'm not sure how that slipped through, as I do actually remember looking up their MobyGames while writing this. I'm chalking it up to brain fog.

@MontyMole I loved it. I actually volunteered to guide it at Gamesradar after I beat it, but I hadn't taken any photos, so I had to quickly beat it again. I think, as a result, I ended up creating a bit of a borked guide, where I made one of the chapters basically just a single cutscene long because I already knew what to do.

@-wc- He's said before in an interview that Chip Tanaka is his non-Nintendo moniker, so it's what he goes by today. It's why pretty much everything he does nowadays is under that name and not Hip

@Spooningbards I'm not sure why, if the developer himself was comfortable describing it like that.

@JJtheTexan The Daikatana ad really had very little to do with him. It had more to do with Mike Wilson, who later co-founded Devolver Digital, which is obviously known for being a bit irreverent with its ads.

Romero was apparently uncomfortable with the ad because it didn't sound like something he'd say, and his name was obviously on it, so he'd take the fall, but ultimately relented because marketing wasn't his thing.

@Nool Stephen highlighted that to me when I was messaging him. It completely slipped past me. And thanks! This is the stuff I personally love doing. It seems to have gone down really well, too, so it looks like I'll be doing more of it.

@Razieluigi I'm not sure this is coming to theatres. It's probably going to be a streaming series type thing for kids. I don't think a distributor has been revealed yet.

When I was growing up, pretty much every major film had an animated spin-off series (Godzilla, Men in Black, Evolution).

So the idea of just using Tetris as a jumping-off point for an animated thing is a bit less egregious to me than their original plans of a sci-fi trilogy that would have been cancelled after the first film.

If it happens to have a good art style, they may have something. A slightly cynical something. But something. It may also help that I've been playing Dragon Quest Builders 2 a lot lately, and the premise for this sounds a lot like that.

@Razieluigi I mean, there is. It rhymes with honey.

@weekendroady I honestly didn't mind the name change all that much, because I think a lot of people understood it was all under the same 'Star Fox' umbrella. In fact, I'd probably say Star Wing is the clunkier of the two names, since they're so similar.

At least with Lylat Wars, there was kind of a gravitas to it that I'd speculate probably helped Nintendo in appealing to teenagers in the region.

Price is still too high. There's definitely a rise in interest from younger people in going back to simpler, less addictive tech. But I feel like the ideal price point is much, much lower. The only way I can see this working is to make it as basic as possible, and market it almost like a toy with Y2K aesthetics, to appeal to the niche. Even then, I'd still be asking, "Why does this need to be a Commodore product?"

Not for me personally. I imagine these are for people with a ton of disposable income who just want them as display items more than anything else.

Each to their own, but there are a ton of better ways to spend money.

Jeez, that picture isn't helping my reputation as the Hookshot cryptid. I swear I exist, honest!

@GravyThief No problem! Glad to be of help.

@Gamecuber That podcast is great. Someone recommended it to me a couple of years back, and it brought back a lot of great memories. If anyone enjoys this, that would definitely be the place to go for more in-depth discussions of each issue.

@infinityx2 It's pretty easy to understand what I mean, unless you're willfully misreading it to try to pick holes or find an argument to have with a stranger online. I never said the games were AI-based.

If you like genAI, fine; love it all you want, but there are places available to me that don't use AI for marketing/promotional materials, and don't hand over almost every part of their business off to the technology. I think it's fine for me to state a preference that I want to support those businesses first.

@Sketcz Strangely, the site is searchable through google and works fine, but direct links are borked.

@somnambulance Do you mean like tracing or just like aping the same style? Do you have any examples?

My personal belief was that this was just in line with how other shows like Cow & Chicken, SpongeBob, and The Marvellous Misadventures of Flapjack copied the same gross out style.

@sbeng135 Mike actually told us the same story when we interviewed him.

In fact, to my embarrassment, I have to admit I cut a lot of the Naka anecdotes that have blown up from the Sega-16 interview from my own interview, including the above about Billy Hatcher — mostly because I thought there may be some context that I was missing (maybe Naka was joking, for instance):
https://www.timeextension.com/features/it-sounds-like-some-kind-of-std-the-birth-of-sonic-xbox-in-japan-and-why-namcos-advertising-hated-the-name-klonoa

Mike also said to me that Naka apparently told him in a limo on the way to accept a lifetime achievement award that they should make him the chief figure at Sega and fire everyone else, since his games were the only ones at Sega to sell. It's hard to know whether it's true, though, or just bad blood between the two.

Interestingly, after speaking to Mike, I did speak to a bunch of Sega people on the Japanese side, and they aren't too positive about Naka either. Like Mike, they acknowledged he was a genius programmer, but referred to Naka as "one of the many monsters Sega created" and accused him of picking out targets beneath him to bully. It seems at the very least, then, there's some truth to Naka being incredibly hard to get along with, despite some people constantly making this another Sega of America vs Sega of Japan thing.

@Saki-Endo Definitely! I have a huge soft spot for it. I think I was originally introduced to it through the PS1 ports. Because they were published by Sony, I remember them featuring quite prominently on demo discs at the time.

The clown from the Broken Sword intro used to terrify me, but fortunately, that small dose of trauma didn't develop into full-blown Coulrophobia.

@TooDrunkToFunk No problem at all! I always appreciate feedback, if it's constructive. Just thought I'd explain myself haha

@TooDrunkToFunk My bad. I was under the impression that you could categorise these as 'plug and play consoles', despite the original being a computer. But I guess I'm in the minority with that, so I've changed it.

@PKDuckman I imagine it doesn't really cost them anything to keep them and do nothing with them. They can just sit on them as much as they want, and then collect a payday if any studio does eventually become desperate enough to remake them.

@jamesamong007 The opening wasn't inspired by B-movies. It was a sincere attempt at a Hollywood-style opening, and Mikami ended up being unhappy with it because of the low budget. I interviewed some of the original cast about it here: https://www.ign.com/articles/resident-evil-1-anniversary-live-action-cutscenes

@NatiaAdamo I mean nothing by it. I'm paraphrasing the quote immediately below.

Capcom basically heard reports back that fans could tell the actors weren't from the US, but had slight Canadian accents. They wanted American actors. By 4, recording was done across LA & Canada. Then, after that, the Canadian studio was no longer used.

@Moroboshi876 As far as I can tell, neither Apogee or Gearbox own the rights to the original BioMenace. The primary BioMenace developer James (Jim) Norwood does.

I agree this one is a bit weird, because of it being a remaster and having a past association with a big publisher (now turned indie publisher), but the current game is being made and published by a very small company, so it does seem to fit the bill in some regards.

I can't imagine they had a huge marketing budget either, so this Evercade deal seems like a good way for them to bring more exposure to the GOG & Steam release, rather than agreeing to bury it in a collection of other games.

@Stevemalkpus There was, but I've added another link at the bottom to make it clearer

@gojiguy I'm not sure how much I can say without putting my foot in it, other than I've voiced my opposition to this privately. It seems to be a network-wide, not site-specific, decision.

@KGRAMR Yikes! Thanks for the correction, fixed.

@Razieluigi Last year, I tried finding out what was happening with that Space Channel 5 film they announced all the way back in 2022, and couldn't really find out anything about it, despite getting in touch with a few people close to the project.

All I know is that one of the producers on the project overseeing it for Picture Start left, and they haven't publicly announced who took over his role. As for Comix Zone, it sounded like there was a completed script, but that was all people were willing to share.

@BulkSlash Consulted with Damien, real hardware is fine too! I've added an edit in.

@BulkSlash It's Cero C (so ages 15 and up). It's probably got some suggestive stuff in similar to other VNs, but no sexual content or nudity — as far as I can tell.

@WileyDragonfly Thanks for the correction! I've updated the piece.

@obijuankanoobie The anniversary was last year, but they announced the concert back in August for this year, strangely enough. This album is basically tied to that.

I remember they did say they had "multiple [Chrono Trigger] projects" on the go, back when the anniversary celebrations were announced last March. But it's been pretty quiet, beyond the music side of things. I'd personally love it if something was in the works game-wise, even though I have it on DS, as I know there are people out there who won't touch it unless it's on Switch.

I'm sure something will happen eventually, as there's money to be made and Yuji Horii seems to be revisiting many of his old games. Maybe I'm being too optimistic, though.

As well as Big Blue, wasn't Ed also attached to make Dolphin Quest for the Amico? Seems like he's been trying to make a successor for years now. I'm glad he's getting the opportunity.

I'm kind of curious if László Szenttornyai is also on this, too. He worked with Ed on Ecco and Ecco: Tides of Time.

@SimShady We never use AI to write articles.

That's the original text from the piece we published last January on the device (before the Nintendo Switch 2 was released in June 2025), hence the "original story" heading.

The new info is at the top of the page, under today's date.

@BlobExtension I don't think you can pin the blame entirely on the ad, as it was just one part of a larger campaign. But it certainly didn't help matters.

It seems to be part of that '90s school of marketing that relies on being edgy to cut through the noise rather than trusting the strength of the product will do the work for them.

That would be fine, but late '90s game mags were all noise, and the concept was so far removed from what Klonoa actually was, I'm not sure how many ended up doing the research for themselves.

As for the "shooter on rails" comment, my best guess is he either misspoke or misremembered. He also said EGM gave the game a 4/10, which we looked into and found was incorrect. They actually gave it a 9/10 across the board. This happens a lot when asking people to remember details almost 25+ years after the fact. I've added a note to the piece to point out this error, which was missing before.

As for your other points, I would say arcade games like Monkey Ball are definitely not what he's referring to with that 'arcade' comment. He's most likely referring to reissues of older arcade and 16-bit arcade-style games for GBA and GameCube, which would be easy for people to finish and return quickly.

The Monkey Ball games, as he lets on, offered a bit more replay value and were new experiences you couldn't really get elsewhere (except the arcades, which were pretty much dying, if not dead at this point), so they had slightly more longevity to them.

As to your last point, I don't think he said he ever had a problem with Sonic at all. In fact, during the interview, he acknowledged several times that Yuji Naka's games were the only ones that sold (which would include Sonic Adventure 2, etc). My best guess is that this is just his frustration at having to sell the same type of games he worked on at Sega Japan in the 90s, 10 years later. He wanted more original IPs to sell, which would plug into what was popular, but Sega's initial response to going third-party was 'Now we can put our existing titles on other consoles.'

@MontyMole I did ask about the shooting in the trailers, but didn't get an answer, sadly.

I've seen someone suggest it's because of them not wanting to have violence in the trailer to avoid it being age-restricted on certain platforms, which would make some sense, I guess.

@slider1983 Thanks for the correction! I've amended to make that clearer

@slider1983 It seems to be both, judging from the way the creator chooses to write it. A bit like how we don't go around saying "Stephen King's It", but shorten it to just "It" for brevity