Johnny_Arthur

I'd like someone to explain why Natsume allowed Tecmo to modify the game that was originally intended to be the sequel to Shadow of the Ninja, ultimately resulting in Ninja Gaiden Shadow.
Is there a story behind this?
Is it legal for one company to know another company's internal plans and modify one of its projects?

The people at Limited Run Games: "Damn, they beat us to it."

@GodlessPreservation My apologies, I didn't mean to be offensive, but if I had any knowledge of programming and design, I would include the two missing characters from Megaman Powered Up, complete with their music.
That would make the NES game more interesting and make people want to replay it.

When they include Time Man and Oil Man, then we'll talk.

This is by far my favorite Contra game, and one I have a special fondness for. My cousin got it back in '94, and we enjoyed it together. I was able to finish it when he lent it to me for a couple of weeks while I was sick.

Sadly, my cousin passed away in 2016 at the age of 34, and I think of him every day—the moments we spent together, his voice still echoing in my head, when we played NES, rented games, and especially when we enjoyed Contra Force. While I was hoping for a sequel, this news still makes me happy because it will have all those qualities that could have made it even better.
T_T

@KernCasey Not in my country.

I'd like to know why Taito Milestone 3 wasn't released on the eShop in my country. I know no one from Taito will answer me, but I'd like to know if there's any way I can get it digitally.

In my opinion, it's the best of the three R-Type games, and the one that gave me the most trouble back then, since I could never finish it. I bought it for Game Boy Advance, and it wasn't half as great as the SNES version.

I don't know why I still feel like it's a Jaleco game instead of an Irem one.

Sadly, I don't know all the writers at Retro Gamers, but a significant loss is always felt and affects you in some way. Nick Thorpe passed away knowing he fulfilled his purpose in this world, and if he had fans, then his work will always be remembered. I write articles for a Spanish-language magazine, and sadly, I'll never reach the level of brilliance of an English-language writer. At least Thorpe will be remembered. Long live him.

I saw this game only once in the arcades and it captivated me for life, but for years I didn't know its name. I'd even forgotten about it for a couple of years, but once I learned it, I never forgot it again. Later, I found out that the creator was the same person who worked on several Capcom franchises.

I'm so glad that Hamster Games is finally bringing it to consoles. I think Rock 'N Rope deserved at least two more sequels; its concept had so much potential for evolution.
I'm still waiting for them to release Cabal, Blood Bros., the three Golden Axe games, Double Dragon 3, Joe & Mac, the two Robocop games, Iron Horse, Miki, The Legend of Cage, Sunset Riders, The Simpsons, King Of The Jungle, Lightning Sword, The Lost Castle in Darkmist and Vendetta.

The last time I saw him was in the 1995 Mortal Kombat movie (I didn't watch Tekken, and I only dropped The Man in the High Castle halfway through the first season), but this news hit me like a ton of bricks, a sign of how the '90s are fading from our lives and how actors who defined our childhoods are leaving us.

T_T

That's what happens when you have passion but no brains. You created something incredibly lucrative, believing it was worthless, but Valve saw the potential and bought it for pennies.

Now they're earning millions every month, and you're left with nothing.

This part of the story makes sense to me, because according to one of Nintendo's former engineers, when Yokoi was planning the Game Boy (which was the evolution of the Game & Watch), they were negotiating the monochrome screens with Company X but couldn't reach an agreement. Then they negotiated with Company Y, who sold them much cheaper, and they closed the deal. BUT, when the executives from Company Y left Nintendo's offices, representatives from Company X arrived and approached Yamauchi, offering him a monochrome screen at a much lower price. Yamauchi was in a bind and asked Yokoi to come up with an excuse to back out of the deal with Company Y. Yokoi asked one of his engineers to handle the matter, and this engineer created fake documentation for a portable console with a color screen. They presented it to Company Y, and they understood that this wasn't the screen Nintendo was looking for (wink, wink).

It's rumored that the people from Company Y approached Sega and presented them with the same falsified documentation, proposing to manufacture a handheld console with a color screen so they wouldn't lose the units they had already produced.

The same engineer who came up with the idea of ​​creating the falsified documentation bought a Game Gear, disassembled it, and was nearly shocked when he saw that it had been manufactured according to the specifications in the documentation he had created.

This part of the story makes sense when I combine it with what's reported in this news article: Sega didn't want to switch to a monochrome screen because they thought the idea that Nintendo "rejected" would work for them.

Did Sergeant Bertha Blast pass away?

Just kidding, any death is regrettable, and she earned her place in heaven for her immense contribution to the world of video games.

P.S.: I would like to ask the TS moderators not to delete the comments. I would like to know what kind of things they would say to someone who left us, so I have something to point them out to.

Alex Josef is absolutely right. The original Acclaim based its entire game library on licenses. I understand that nowadays it would be extremely expensive for them to re-release the WWF games, since before, Vince McMahon sold them the complete package at a reasonable price. But now they would have to pay not only for the WWE rights, but ALSO for the likeness of each and every wrestler individually, which is extremely unfair to the consumer.

The same would apply if they were to re-release movies like Alien 3, Judge Dredd, Stargate, Terminator 2, True Lies, Beetlejuice, etc. I imagine they would now have to pay for the movie rights AND ALSO for the actor's likeness rights.

And I suppose the same principle applies to games based on sports franchises like the NBA, NFL, and MLB.

But Josef is wrong about one thing, Acclaim did have its own sagas (Revolt, Xtreme-G, Tiger-Heli, NARC, Super Smash TV, Forsaken, Iggy's Reckin' Balls, Fur Fighters, 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker, ZooCube, Headhunter, Vexx, Gladiator: Sword of Vengeance).

I practically devoured the shmuplations report, I'm very surprised that nobody has left comments here or there, that's a terrible sign that the public is forgetting what made the world of video games great.

There was nothing more glorious for a next-gen console than releasing all those arcade classics from 40 years ago. It drives me crazy to think that I can only now enjoy all those games I so longed to have in my house in their original versions.
I have to admit that the console ports were never faithful and that the experience wasn't the same; both graphical and gameplay details were lost.
I know what you'll also say: that this could already be enjoyed in the mid-90s with the MAME emulator, but getting those games to run was always complicated for me, and I could never figure out how to get several of them to run. The BIOS might be missing a file, the ROM might be outdated, the game might have no sound or sounded very different. They never managed to simplify things.
But now I can play in handheld mode and on my own TV.

Personally, I still consider this to be one of the biggest mistakes Nintendo ever made, as the SNES was one of the most beloved consoles, and the world yearned for its lifespan to extend for a good handful more years. Everyone was even willing to buy that peripheral, but Nintendo never explained why it was canceled. For years, I heard the excuse was that CD-ROM technology was too slow to transfer data, and that wasn't what Nintendo was looking for. Now I find out it was because Sony was going to collect royalties from the software. What was the problem with that?
But what I still don't understand is why, if the hardware was Nintendo's, Sony was able to use it without any problems on the PSX.
The irony is that after the cancellation and the promise of the N64, the PSX often reminded me of the canceled CD-ROM, and I didn't even know the real story.

Let's just say this was the game that introduced me to UBI Soft on the SNES, and I think it was the only one released for that console. The thing is, I fell in love with this game because it was a 4-player Mario Kart (I was lucky enough to have the Hudson Soft multitap and played it with my cousins). That day, I made the mistake of elevating UBI Soft to the status of gods, and I hoped they would do well as a company so they'd release a sequel in the future, which never came. I found it strange because I was sure Street Racer had been a hit.
Of course, the game was far from perfect; it needed more work, the weapons needed improvement, the melee attacks were very bland, and when you ran out of energy, you didn't die; you just kept driving your vehicle as if nothing had happened.
Some time later I found out about the Gameboy version (quite mediocre by the way), the PSX version which was nothing more than a slight improvement of the SNES version, and later I found out that the programmer was a Turk who lived in England and that when the sequel to Street Racer had already been announced he decided to return to his native country as soon as it was cancelled.
Now, to be honest, this game has aged terribly (not even comparable to the Top Gear trilogy, which did stand the test of time and you can enjoy its trilogy today). The other day I played Street Racer on my SNES and it already feels obsolete. I think they should fix all the bugs and make it so you can lose like in F-zero.

It looks more like Legend Of Cage than Return Of The Ninja.

And finally, we had to wait 34 long years to finally enjoy a remake of this wonderful game, in my opinion the best ever made for the NES (forgive me for Shadow of the Ninja and Batman Return of the Joker).
For those who don't know, Natsume had programmed Shatterhand and was going to release it in Japan and America, BUT Angel, which held the license for the Solbrain series, commissioned Natsume to make a game based on the series. Natsume modified the Shatterhand game, and as a result, a "different" version was released in Japan, while in America, we had the game in its purest form.
I knew the rights were held by Jaleco, but with its demise or due to expiration dates, they returned to Natsume around 2009, although they never made it public. With luck, they only released a compilation album with all the songs from Natsume's most well-known franchises (including Shatterhand).
Even so, it's sad that those of us who loved this game had to wait a lifetime to finally enjoy a remake.

@Zuljaras Two years ago, someone wrote one of the most detailed reviews I've ever seen of this game (which is also a cult classic of mine), unfortunately it's only in Spanish.

https://errekgamer.com/2023/01/26/analisis-shatterhand-nes/

@Sketcz Why do you say Steam isn't working?

Final Vendetta disappointed me as a game, it has absolutely nothing redeeming about it and in fact I'm surprised they gave them the license for Doom and Terminator.

As a Jaleco fan, I think the people at City Connection Games should go back to the original name (I don't care if it once belonged to a Japanese real estate company, Jaleco's name will always be associated with video games).
And they should release a sequel to City Connection.

Shadowgate+Obra Dinn

But if the Space Invaders movie was already made many years ago, it's called War of the Worlds, even Spielberg made a remake in 2005.
I'd much rather they make it a biopic like Tetris; that formula worked and it worked.

This series is truly awful. Mega Man's design reminded me a lot of Popeye, and the animation style was very Hanna-Barbera (meaning the artists were working without motivation just to keep up and save money).
I'm far ahead of the OVAs that came out in Japan several years ago, needless to say it surpasses the series in every way and in fact it deserved to be released on Blu-ray.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yv8XJJwYjjk

Stop trying to pronounce it in English. The word "Amiga" is pronounced "female friend."
Thanks.