@avcrypt "...Europe never had an appetite for consoles." The Atari VCS was around - I saw three! Well after they were popular. I saw Vic 20's (I had one but there were no games around) and the Master System and Mega Drive were popular.
This tell me that the EU has taste. Because nothing that came from Nintendo hit the mark. Sony's Playstations and the MS boxes, likewise were lacklustre.
So consoles have not really been any good since the SMD. Nobody played the Sony/MS/N consoles with any real enthusiasm.
The Jaguar should have done well but it just can't compete with the marketing budgets of three of the world's biggest companies, removing competition, rather than competing with anyone else.
Leaving the console space stale and with no imperative to innovate, given the monopolies they achieved with ease after the Saturn was successfully hidden from view.
@WileyDragonfly there are more games from the eu than Turrican or Lemmings. Just from DMA/R* you have gta games. Core's Tomb Raider and Phychnosis's Wipeout. There is Sensible Soccer, the Forza Horizon games, Driveclub (rip) and Dirt series racing games.
The US has not classic games apart from Duke Nukem and Doom as well as Call of Duty and Battlefield. That's really it.
But then Blizzard were cool. With Diablo and Warcraft 3. Relic were cool. Diablo was developed by 2 Spaniards but does this matter?
What is most popular now? Mobile games. Why? Because Sony, MS and N failed to capture a mass audience.
What is most popular in mobile games. Well Angry Birds is Swedish. Minecraft is Swedish. PUBG is Russian. The Clash rts games are Finnish. Roblox is the US's most cutting edge and successful game company at this point for the development of their Minecraft competitor, which is a game platform and not a game in itself.
US companies are not innovating at any point in particular with the exception Atari circa the early 1980's. SSI and New World Computing as well as Westwood pc strategy and rpg studios.
Although the Bitmap Brother's showed Relic how to make Company of Heroes, with their robot themed area capturing rts mechanics with 'Z'.
Japan have never produced an fps or rts game to my knowledge, that is of any note with them mostly concerned with jrpgs, scrolling shooters and 'belt scrollers' and fighters until beat em ups went away.
The truth is that the EU was and still is the world leader in video game production.
It's the imperative of the US journalists and commentators to refute this notion for the sake of national integrity and cohesion and perpetuate the narrative that Japan is the world leader, at the request of their leaders, who support Japan.
Ideas from outside of the border, with the exception of Japan, are simply unwelcome.
Nintendo dismantled the businesses of Atari, Intellivision and Coleco with the help of the US government, leaving their game industry in tatters.
Taking the US from world leaders in the early 80's, to third rate and irrelevant after Japan dominated all console production and the ZX Spectrum, Amiga and Atari ST, ignored and swept under the carpet, all to give Nintendo the chance to compete.
Although the computer divisions of Atari and Commodore were dismantled by IBM, Intel and Microsoft.
Also compounding the US game industry's problems is the fervent belief in the free market and unchecked capitalism that will not protect any business entity under any circumstance, with no business in particular considered important to the economy.
This last point leads to a focus on short term gains and limits the ability of young and small studios with big ideas to mature and become established before being absorbed. The UK also faces this problem, as almost no companies or studios remain from the 90's, regardless of their size or successes at that time.
Although Midway, for instance is an outlier, as it enjoyed enthusiastic support for it's legacy as a company but failed to deliver quality products or innovations consistently leading up to it's closure. Although Gauntlet Legends is a solid title.
@carlos82 TripleJump ceased broadcasting. But they were the worst. Just awful.
The reason is because America. It's paramount that the US be portrayed as the pinnacle of achievement in all aspects, especially technology.
So you get statements like. 'In the EU, they didn't have access to proper or powerful computers (like the NES), so they had to be resourceful, which is why the demo scene (which the US recently learned about) and bedroom coders were able to make memory go further.'
This suggests that memory or data footprint has since no longer become a concern and that in America, they didn't need to be good at coding. Because they're so rich.
I saw a video a couple of years ago that demonstrated that you don't need cameras and fat chunky ic's to get perfect light gun on flat screens without delays like the Wiimote or Sinjin, or even the Menacer using the flat screen tech and almost no circuitry.
Using timings related to the actual flat screen tech and not just a bunch of chips calculating positions within a black square and gyroscopes.
I will try to find it again.
AI gun? What if it turns on you?
Did you know that the Sega Master System Light Phaser is still in production? The simple design is so robust that the old guns still work, too!
I would wager the cost of production of a Light Phaser is around $1. The Saturn goated light gun is £100 second hand.
100% insanely pointless. Is this for the event that the game is released in physical cartridge form with additional sram?
Also, you are not expected to "memorise the passwords" in Road Rash, it is excepted that you write them down using something called a 'pen' and 'paper'.
Not quite as noteworthy as the fact that these games now run close to 30fps without overclocking, on original hardware.
I would very much appreciate these games to use the full 240p PAL resolution to remove those 8px bars at the top and bottom of the screen for square pixels and not the distorted ntsc image for an additional 16px of horizontal screen real estate.
It's a shame these games peaked with RR2 as the 3D0 (and ports) version pales in comparison and the N64 and PSX games don't even bear thinking about.
Comments 7
Re: "Poorly Analyzed US-Centric Garbage" - Why Do Americans Keep Ignoring European Gaming History?
@avcrypt "...Europe never had an appetite for consoles." The Atari VCS was around - I saw three! Well after they were popular. I saw Vic 20's (I had one but there were no games around) and the Master System and Mega Drive were popular.
This tell me that the EU has taste. Because nothing that came from Nintendo hit the mark. Sony's Playstations and the MS boxes, likewise were lacklustre.
So consoles have not really been any good since the SMD. Nobody played the Sony/MS/N consoles with any real enthusiasm.
The Jaguar should have done well but it just can't compete with the marketing budgets of three of the world's biggest companies, removing competition, rather than competing with anyone else.
Leaving the console space stale and with no imperative to innovate, given the monopolies they achieved with ease after the Saturn was successfully hidden from view.
Re: "Poorly Analyzed US-Centric Garbage" - Why Do Americans Keep Ignoring European Gaming History?
@WileyDragonfly there are more games from the eu than Turrican or Lemmings. Just from DMA/R* you have gta games. Core's Tomb Raider and Phychnosis's Wipeout. There is Sensible Soccer, the Forza Horizon games, Driveclub (rip) and Dirt series racing games.
The US has not classic games apart from Duke Nukem and Doom as well as Call of Duty and Battlefield. That's really it.
But then Blizzard were cool. With Diablo and Warcraft 3. Relic were cool. Diablo was developed by 2 Spaniards but does this matter?
What is most popular now? Mobile games. Why? Because Sony, MS and N failed to capture a mass audience.
What is most popular in mobile games. Well Angry Birds is Swedish. Minecraft is Swedish. PUBG is Russian. The Clash rts games are Finnish. Roblox is the US's most cutting edge and successful game company at this point for the development of their Minecraft competitor, which is a game platform and not a game in itself.
US companies are not innovating at any point in particular with the exception Atari circa the early 1980's. SSI and New World Computing as well as Westwood pc strategy and rpg studios.
Although the Bitmap Brother's showed Relic how to make Company of Heroes, with their robot themed area capturing rts mechanics with 'Z'.
Japan have never produced an fps or rts game to my knowledge, that is of any note with them mostly concerned with jrpgs, scrolling shooters and 'belt scrollers' and fighters until beat em ups went away.
Re: "Poorly Analyzed US-Centric Garbage" - Why Do Americans Keep Ignoring European Gaming History?
The truth is that the EU was and still is the world leader in video game production.
It's the imperative of the US journalists and commentators to refute this notion for the sake of national integrity and cohesion and perpetuate the narrative that Japan is the world leader, at the request of their leaders, who support Japan.
Ideas from outside of the border, with the exception of Japan, are simply unwelcome.
Nintendo dismantled the businesses of Atari, Intellivision and Coleco with the help of the US government, leaving their game industry in tatters.
Taking the US from world leaders in the early 80's, to third rate and irrelevant after Japan dominated all console production and the ZX Spectrum, Amiga and Atari ST, ignored and swept under the carpet, all to give Nintendo the chance to compete.
Although the computer divisions of Atari and Commodore were dismantled by IBM, Intel and Microsoft.
Also compounding the US game industry's problems is the fervent belief in the free market and unchecked capitalism that will not protect any business entity under any circumstance, with no business in particular considered important to the economy.
This last point leads to a focus on short term gains and limits the ability of young and small studios with big ideas to mature and become established before being absorbed. The UK also faces this problem, as almost no companies or studios remain from the 90's, regardless of their size or successes at that time.
Although Midway, for instance is an outlier, as it enjoyed enthusiastic support for it's legacy as a company but failed to deliver quality products or innovations consistently leading up to it's closure. Although Gauntlet Legends is a solid title.
Re: "Poorly Analyzed US-Centric Garbage" - Why Do Americans Keep Ignoring European Gaming History?
Removed
Re: "Poorly Analyzed US-Centric Garbage" - Why Do Americans Keep Ignoring European Gaming History?
@carlos82 TripleJump ceased broadcasting. But they were the worst. Just awful.
The reason is because America. It's paramount that the US be portrayed as the pinnacle of achievement in all aspects, especially technology.
So you get statements like. 'In the EU, they didn't have access to proper or powerful computers (like the NES), so they had to be resourceful, which is why the demo scene (which the US recently learned about) and bedroom coders were able to make memory go further.'
This suggests that memory or data footprint has since no longer become a concern and that in America, they didn't need to be good at coding. Because they're so rich.
Re: Time Crisis, Point Blank And Steel Gunner Are Coming To Modern TVs Thanks To This AI-Powered Light Gun
I saw a video a couple of years ago that demonstrated that you don't need cameras and fat chunky ic's to get perfect light gun on flat screens without delays like the Wiimote or Sinjin, or even the Menacer using the flat screen tech and almost no circuitry.
Using timings related to the actual flat screen tech and not just a bunch of chips calculating positions within a black square and gyroscopes.
I will try to find it again.
AI gun? What if it turns on you?
Did you know that the Sega Master System Light Phaser is still in production? The simple design is so robust that the old guns still work, too!
I would wager the cost of production of a Light Phaser is around $1. The Saturn goated light gun is £100 second hand.
Re: Road Rash Games Get Handy Save Feature Thirty Years Later
100% insanely pointless. Is this for the event that the game is released in physical cartridge form with additional sram?
Also, you are not expected to "memorise the passwords" in Road Rash, it is excepted that you write them down using something called a 'pen' and 'paper'.
Not quite as noteworthy as the fact that these games now run close to 30fps without overclocking, on original hardware.
I would very much appreciate these games to use the full 240p PAL resolution to remove those 8px bars at the top and bottom of the screen for square pixels and not the distorted ntsc image for an additional 16px of horizontal screen real estate.
It's a shame these games peaked with RR2 as the 3D0 (and ports) version pales in comparison and the N64 and PSX games don't even bear thinking about.