@Wezlypipz I can only imagine this isn't the sort of item you'd see sell frequently enough on ebay to get an estimate of actual selling value (not just whatever wishful amount sellers ask). That is, items sold within the last three months.
@Sketcz I'm not familiar with the game but that sounds like "why even have a save feature if it's going to quickly delete itself?"
Even more of a bizarre decision than games like Bionic Commando 1992 which had limited continues and a password save (which among the data saved the number of Continues).
I suppose it's more notorious for the SNES and Genesis games which were developed but not commercially released, but have since been leaked by the developers.
Particularly, there's a long story about the development of the SNES game. Apparently they went through three separate versions of the game after the publisher Viacom insisted on what they'd see as a sure-selling game rather than a particularly thoughtfully developed game, so the dev was increasingly pressured to push out something that'd get them paid, and then the game still got withheld after the film bombed.
Indeed by the mid 2000s, if there was a pizza place in America that still had arcade machines, you could be sure one of the hunting games would be there.
Given that prototype ownership is a very gray area legally, it probably was a bad idea to bring public attention to this since so many of the items are Sega games, there is a chance Sega could claim the lot is legally still their property since they were used for development purposes of Sega IP and not sold to consumers.
@RextheSheep I wasn't too surprised when I learned the SNES game was a port from MS-DOS (which explains why they called the game "Volume 1" even the SNES game never did well enough to get a Volume 2. Indeed, as I remember renting it and it was sure no Secret of Mana, a game that was released the better part of a year earlier despite Interplay's LotR marketing claiming they had made "The First Action Adventure RPG with Multiplayer Real Time Combat".
That Edward Randy game isn't just called that now? It would be nice if they did but oh well.
DE liked to reuse names and the first "Cliffhanger" game they made was a FMV game which used footage from a Lupin the Third movie, so it'll get DMCA struck if you stream or upload videos about the game.
Does WayForward not have any ownership stake in the game in order to object? The IP isn't theirs of course but what about the programming and other elements not directly the property of the IP holder?
@jamess How about Nintendo spend their efforts against Anbernic and whoever else? They won't because it's notoriously hard to sue Chinese companies. Though I read Italy has historically been tolerant of piracy as well, I guess they still thought it was an easier avenue to feel like they've "done something" and still easier to confront that individual since being an EU member I've read made Italian authorities more obligated to investigate such issues. Still, that's putting great effort into suing a customer rather than the actual offender.
Nintendo lawyers have reached a pathetic low. They can't go after the manufacturer that made the device and committed the infringement, so they go after someone who bought the device and made a video about it.
Will have to see how good it is. All I know about running games on C64 was that antipiracy on a lot of disk games was depending on the OS in the disk drive (yes, I've read the floppy drive effectively contained ITS OWN computer, minus a display).
That is the sort of thing we'd hear out of the Super Mario 64 community. (I've heard there's one sound effect you can hear completely exactly once, if you leave the game running for like two weeks or something. May not be an exact amount but the SM64 "speedrunning" community has some strange expections of time. )
Having a title screen, especially a graphical one, seems oddly advanced for a 1979 game. Didn't they need to spare every kilobyte they could get back then?
Spinmaster is a pretty good game though. Certainly one of the better games in the DE catalog. Is Joe & Mac the arcade version? The SNES version was largely its own thing (definitely a platform emphasis), while I think the rest of the ports were based on the arcade original (which I recall had more of an emphasis on combat).
"Fixed crash issue in King of Fighters 95 (SAT) and Ultraman: Hikari no Kyojin Densetsu (SAT)."
Aren't those the two games in the Saturn library which used a ROM cartridge as a secondary data medium in addition to the primary CD to run the game? How would those work on Polymega?
@Zedecks The only thing I can say is that when I opened up my Pier Solar Genesis cart, the PCB had some art but also some text like "64 megs, that's so awesome, it's better than women".
Imagine saying that on a PCB dated July 2010!
Like gee, how many decades behind is that opinion? https://imgur.com/a/LDMUVEZ
@mjparker77 I thought Second Samurai console version was a Genesis game. But I could be wrong, since I don't know that as well since I think the port was also a Europe exclusive. A bit besides the port, as I think the only relation between these games is they are all games Piko bought the copyrights to.
@Nintega_Is_Eternal The Displaced Gamers YouTube channel did a video a little while ago where he questions if the intended cartridge hardware for the canceled Japanese original would've made a difference. He did make an comparison example of Tiny Toon Adventures, showing that game ran a little more optimal on Konami's proprietary Famicom cartridge than it did when transplanted to Nintendo hardware for the western versions. Though I suspect TTA is probably a less demanding game that is less affected by a bit of lag.
Dragon's Lair is a good example of what a cartridge hardware difference, not even necessarily needing a custom CPU, can make. The USA version of NES Dragon's Lair is famous garbage and it deserves to be. Sony just needing to not be ***** cheapskates and spend like another dollar on an extra ROM chip and we could have had the more playable European version. (yes, it was Sony, I'm not letting them hide behind the "CSG Imagesoft" label)
Probably shouldn't be asking why a nearly 40 year old game has a spaceship named AFX-6502 when it is running on a Z80-based console/computer? (To my understanding, the 6502 was an EXTREMELY obscure CPU in Japan at the time, with the Famicom being the one major Japanese game hardware based around it. Iwata got the gig from being one of the few to import Commodore hardware to Japan as a young person, with games for them being some of HAL's earliest work.)
I remember reading some old reviews on retro gaming saying the game itself was kind of meh and it was carried by the anime girl on the cover. Well, at least it's being made available.
@Serpenterror Most people into playing this sort of thing will figure it out. At least they put the buttons in the right spot to at least match the original NeoGeo CD controller (unlike the NeoGeo Mini's extra controller which rotated the layout 90 degrees).
@N00BiSH Yes, I'm surprised they didn't go with a homage to the NeoGeo Pocket with this (then again, people might then expect NGP games to be included) rather than the Game Boy-looking design.
I only now this for the magazine ad that only needed to say "NIGEL BEATS MARIO!" in giant letters, then in tiny letters "the driver, not the plumber." Even though that WAS after the latter had already done both. (driver Andretti did get his own game, though)
@JackGYarwood I imagine at this point, Urban Strike is probably known for having a particular scene that has been turned from fiction to fact, making rerelease a little difficult.
@JackGYarwood I think this game (or at least its franchise) got one console appearance and out of all the consoles one could choose to port this to, someone chose the Game Gear (where it's not surprising I think it became one of the rarer games).
@Damo The lack of Metroid carts is explained that I don't think Metroid is nearly as popular with Japanese gamers. Certainly not as much as Zelda and Mario.
I do recall it has been said that Kid Icarus is also a lot more popular with western gamers than Japanese.
I do have both versions of Fusion, as I have read about the Japanese version containing more content (also released like three months later) but I hear Nintendo didn't sell nearly as many copies over there.
@bring_on_branstons I can only imagine someone has made a mod to put Kamek back in the game (was seen in early screenshots under its development name Super Mario Kart R then cut from the final game).
@Lowdefal Reportedly Chocobo's Dungeon 1 was denied a western release because of lost source code.
@Blofse Original source code would've surely had developer comments and/or meaningful code labels. Those can't be reconstructed, and there will certainly be parts of code you can only guess at what the programmer wanted to do.
@PinballBuzzbro "-All they ever make nowadays is lazy licensed slop based on the same 5 shonen anime over and over again" I'm pretty sure that's just the Bandai part of the company. It occurred to me that Bandai is approaching 40 years of holding the Dragon Ball game license. Quoting AVGN "Can't someone else have a try?" No.
From what I've been told the Amiga CD32 was withheld from the US market due to some legal issue. (I hear the NTSC version did ship to Canada.) I mean, I know by that point Commodore was, despite being an American company, far more successful with the European market anyways but that does sound like a notable point in its collapse.
One of my favorite Laws in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is the one prohibiting attacking Monsters. Moreso thinking about what kind of morals is it teaching us? How are you even supposed to win an encounter when it comes up? I'm guessing you are supposed to use Anti-Law cards. Or Escape. Reroll the RNG. But what I found is better: Get a Beastmaster to control the enemies to attack each other. Then for the last one get it to attack a player character with auto-counterattack abilities. Forgiveness mechanic abuse!
@slider1983 I just watched Ashens' review of this from like a decade ago. He complained he only had one US game to review on the unit (Ecco the Dolphin) but surely he must have a number of PAL games (such as his Sonic he had in the background) that would play just fine on the device (or in Sonic's case, better than on his UK hardware, since Sonic 1 had no PAL optimization).
But it's possible that maybe he didn't want to show Sonic running on the device since the Green Hill Zone music at least will be copyright claimed by the composer on YouTube.
I mean, it does make sense if they left out the other Bond actors since surely Nintendo would've had to pay each of the former actors for likeness rights.
@The_Nintend_Pedant I only heard of that later, from I think Game Informer, who reported that the missing Bond photos were present in the ROM data and there were GameShark codes to view the portraits but that was all that actually existed in the game (or at least the final released version).
I wonder if that is just the European price. In North America, the New 3DS XL and 2DS were pretty much the only models sold for a few years, so it has to be a more common unit. I only have a standard size New 3DS because it's a Japanese import.
Comments 979
Re: Here's Your Chance To Own One Of The Rarest Consoles Ever Made
@Wezlypipz I can only imagine this isn't the sort of item you'd see sell frequently enough on ebay to get an estimate of actual selling value (not just whatever wishful amount sellers ask).
That is, items sold within the last three months.
Re: 30 Years On, A Bunch Of Cheat Codes Have Been Discovered For One Of Sega Saturn's Most "Notorious" Games
@Sketcz I'm not familiar with the game but that sounds like "why even have a save feature if it's going to quickly delete itself?"
Even more of a bizarre decision than games like Bionic Commando 1992 which had limited continues and a password save (which among the data saved the number of Continues).
Re: 30 Years On, A Bunch Of Cheat Codes Have Been Discovered For One Of Sega Saturn's Most "Notorious" Games
I suppose it's more notorious for the SNES and Genesis games which were developed but not commercially released, but have since been leaked by the developers.
Particularly, there's a long story about the development of the SNES game. Apparently they went through three separate versions of the game after the publisher Viacom insisted on what they'd see as a sure-selling game rather than a particularly thoughtfully developed game, so the dev was increasingly pressured to push out something that'd get them paid, and then the game still got withheld after the film bombed.
Re: Random: John Romero Explains How One Texas Walmart Exec Kickstarted The Rise Of The Hunting Sim
Indeed by the mid 2000s, if there was a pizza place in America that still had arcade machines, you could be sure one of the hunting games would be there.
Re: Rumour: Seller Of Undumped GBA, DS, DSi And 3DS Beta Carts Raided By British Police
Given that prototype ownership is a very gray area legally, it probably was a bad idea to bring public attention to this since so many of the items are Sega games, there is a chance Sega could claim the lot is legally still their property since they were used for development purposes of Sega IP and not sold to consumers.
Re: Talking Point: If You Think AI Can Make SNES Games, We Have Some Magic Beans We'd Love To Sell You
@RextheSheep I wasn't too surprised when I learned the SNES game was a port from MS-DOS (which explains why they called the game "Volume 1" even the SNES game never did well enough to get a Volume 2. Indeed, as I remember renting it and it was sure no Secret of Mana, a game that was released the better part of a year earlier despite Interplay's LotR marketing claiming they had made "The First Action Adventure RPG with Multiplayer Real Time Combat".
Re: Latest Taito Egret II Mini Software Release To Include 10 Games From Technos Japan And Data East
That Edward Randy game isn't just called that now? It would be nice if they did but oh well.
DE liked to reuse names and the first "Cliffhanger" game they made was a FMV game which used footage from a Lupin the Third movie, so it'll get DMCA struck if you stream or upload videos about the game.
Re: WayForward Distances Itself From ModRetro's Re-Release Of Sabrina: Zapped! On Game Boy Color
Does WayForward not have any ownership stake in the game in order to object?
The IP isn't theirs of course but what about the programming and other elements not directly the property of the IP holder?
Re: YouTuber Raided For Reviewing Handheld Emulation Consoles Pre-Loaded With Sony And Nintendo Games
@jamess How about Nintendo spend their efforts against Anbernic and whoever else? They won't because it's notoriously hard to sue Chinese companies.
Though I read Italy has historically been tolerant of piracy as well, I guess they still thought it was an easier avenue to feel like they've "done something" and still easier to confront that individual since being an EU member I've read made Italian authorities more obligated to investigate such issues. Still, that's putting great effort into suing a customer rather than the actual offender.
Re: YouTuber Raided For Reviewing Handheld Emulation Consoles Pre-Loaded With Sony And Nintendo Games
Nintendo lawyers have reached a pathetic low.
They can't go after the manufacturer that made the device and committed the infringement, so they go after someone who bought the device and made a video about it.
Re: Konami's First-Ever Arcade Basketball Title Is Coming To PS4 & Switch
This is the game where we are presumably adults and start out by dunking on a middle school team.
Re: BBC Recently Covered The Rise Of Retro Gaming - See If You Can Spot The Problem
@Andee I haven't tried doing but there's no doubt Nintendo thought that someone would try many years ago.
Re: BBC Recently Covered The Rise Of Retro Gaming - See If You Can Spot The Problem
I don't see the problem. I absolutely enjoyed playing Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt on my SNES as a child.
Re: Commodore's New Ownership Unveils The Commodore 64 Ultimate Edition
Will have to see how good it is. All I know about running games on C64 was that antipiracy on a lot of disk games was depending on the OS in the disk drive (yes, I've read the floppy drive effectively contained ITS OWN computer, minus a display).
Re: Random: Did You Know About This Strange Sonic 3 'File Select' Bug?
That is the sort of thing we'd hear out of the Super Mario 64 community. (I've heard there's one sound effect you can hear completely exactly once, if you leave the game running for like two weeks or something. May not be an exact amount but the SM64 "speedrunning" community has some strange expections of time. )
Re: Review: Super Pocket Data East Edition - A Solid Handheld, But One With Too Much Duplication
@Ben12345 That would have to have multiple licensing issues.
Re: A "Lost" Japanese Arcade Game From The 1970s Has Just Been Recreated For Modern PCs
Having a title screen, especially a graphical one, seems oddly advanced for a 1979 game. Didn't they need to spare every kilobyte they could get back then?
Re: Review: Super Pocket Data East Edition - A Solid Handheld, But One With Too Much Duplication
Spinmaster is a pretty good game though. Certainly one of the better games in the DE catalog.
Is Joe & Mac the arcade version? The SNES version was largely its own thing (definitely a platform emphasis), while I think the rest of the ports were based on the arcade original (which I recall had more of an emphasis on combat).
Re: Polymega's 1.1.35 Update Finally Brings Light Gun Support - Here Are The Games You Can Play
"Fixed crash issue in King of Fighters 95 (SAT) and Ultraman: Hikari no Kyojin Densetsu (SAT)."
Aren't those the two games in the Saturn library which used a ROM cartridge as a secondary data medium in addition to the primary CD to run the game? How would those work on Polymega?
Re: "Missing" Genesis Beat 'Em Up Paprium Is Finally Playable Under Emulation
@Zedecks The only thing I can say is that when I opened up my Pier Solar Genesis cart, the PCB had some art but also some text like "64 megs, that's so awesome, it's better than women".
Imagine saying that on a PCB dated July 2010!
Like gee, how many decades behind is that opinion?
https://imgur.com/a/LDMUVEZ
Re: This New 'Beat Em Up Collection' Brings Together 7 "QUByte Classics" In A Single Package
@mjparker77 I thought Second Samurai console version was a Genesis game. But I could be wrong, since I don't know that as well since I think the port was also a Europe exclusive.
A bit besides the port, as I think the only relation between these games is they are all games Piko bought the copyrights to.
Re: Three More Konami NES Titles Are Getting Fanmade SNES Ports
@h3s I'll say there is some charm in Game Boy demakes of arcade games. How far can they strip down a game to its bare essence of a game?
Re: Three More Konami NES Titles Are Getting Fanmade SNES Ports
@Nintega_Is_Eternal The Displaced Gamers YouTube channel did a video a little while ago where he questions if the intended cartridge hardware for the canceled Japanese original would've made a difference.
He did make an comparison example of Tiny Toon Adventures, showing that game ran a little more optimal on Konami's proprietary Famicom cartridge than it did when transplanted to Nintendo hardware for the western versions. Though I suspect TTA is probably a less demanding game that is less affected by a bit of lag.
Dragon's Lair is a good example of what a cartridge hardware difference, not even necessarily needing a custom CPU, can make. The USA version of NES Dragon's Lair is famous garbage and it deserves to be. Sony just needing to not be ***** cheapskates and spend like another dollar on an extra ROM chip and we could have had the more playable European version. (yes, it was Sony, I'm not letting them hide behind the "CSG Imagesoft" label)
Re: Another Port Of Compile's Shoot 'Em Up Classic 'Zanac' Is Launching On Switch This Month
Probably shouldn't be asking why a nearly 40 year old game has a spaceship named AFX-6502 when it is running on a Z80-based console/computer?
(To my understanding, the 6502 was an EXTREMELY obscure CPU in Japan at the time, with the Famicom being the one major Japanese game hardware based around it. Iwata got the gig from being one of the few to import Commodore hardware to Japan as a young person, with games for them being some of HAL's earliest work.)
Re: This Expensive Sega Game Gear Shoot 'Em Up Is Heading To Modern Consoles & Steam
I remember reading some old reviews on retro gaming saying the game itself was kind of meh and it was carried by the anime girl on the cover.
Well, at least it's being made available.
Re: Review: Super Pocket Neo Geo Edition - Unlike SNK's Original, This Handheld Won't Break The Bank
@Serpenterror Most people into playing this sort of thing will figure it out.
At least they put the buttons in the right spot to at least match the original NeoGeo CD controller (unlike the NeoGeo Mini's extra controller which rotated the layout 90 degrees).
Re: Review: Super Pocket Neo Geo Edition - Unlike SNK's Original, This Handheld Won't Break The Bank
@N00BiSH Yes, I'm surprised they didn't go with a homage to the NeoGeo Pocket with this (then again, people might then expect NGP games to be included) rather than the Game Boy-looking design.
Re: This "Lost" Zelda Commercial Is A Million Times Better Than The Ones Nintendo Gave Us
So this isn't really a "lost" commercial at all, but a fan video?
That's a misleading headline, makes it sound like something official.
Re: SNK Just Delisted A Bunch Of Its Games From The Google Play Store
It's hard to imagine playing any of those games on a phone. How does one do it?
Re: Missing For More Than 30 Years, This C64 "Holy Grail" Is Finally Playable
I only now this for the magazine ad that only needed to say "NIGEL BEATS MARIO!" in giant letters, then in tiny letters "the driver, not the plumber." Even though that WAS after the latter had already done both. (driver Andretti did get his own game, though)
Re: Strike Series Designer Outlines Plans For A Spiritual Successor, But You'll Have A Long Wait Before You Can Play It
@JackGYarwood I imagine at this point, Urban Strike is probably known for having a particular scene that has been turned from fiction to fact, making rerelease a little difficult.
Re: Xak's Action RPG Spin-Off 'Fray' Is Getting An EGGCONSOLE Release for Switch
@JackGYarwood I think this game (or at least its franchise) got one console appearance and out of all the consoles one could choose to port this to, someone chose the Game Gear (where it's not surprising I think it became one of the rarer games).
Re: Random: I Was Pranked By These Metroid Barcode Battler Cards, And Now I Wish They Were Legit
@Damo The lack of Metroid carts is explained that I don't think Metroid is nearly as popular with Japanese gamers. Certainly not as much as Zelda and Mario.
I do recall it has been said that Kid Icarus is also a lot more popular with western gamers than Japanese.
I do have both versions of Fusion, as I have read about the Japanese version containing more content (also released like three months later) but I hear Nintendo didn't sell nearly as many copies over there.
Re: Konami's NES Shmup Life Force / Salamander Has Been Ported To The SNES
Judging by the HUD, this is a port of the western (NES) version.
I've heard the Japanese (Famicom) version had some content difference.
Re: "It's A Middle Finger To Everybody" - Producer Behind Netflix's Castlevania And Devil May Cry Series Is Working On Duke Nukem Next
I can only imagine we'll hear an impression from Clint Bassinger at some point.
Re: Mario Kart 64 Has Been Ported To PC
@bring_on_branstons I can only imagine someone has made a mod to put Kamek back in the game (was seen in early screenshots under its development name Super Mario Kart R then cut from the final game).
Re: Oops, Square No Longer Has The Source Code For Final Fantasy Tactics
@Lowdefal Reportedly Chocobo's Dungeon 1 was denied a western release because of lost source code.
@Blofse Original source code would've surely had developer comments and/or meaningful code labels. Those can't be reconstructed, and there will certainly be parts of code you can only guess at what the programmer wanted to do.
Re: A New Dig Dug Game Has Just Been Released, But It's Only Playable For 2 Weeks
@PinballBuzzbro "-All they ever make nowadays is lazy licensed slop based on the same 5 shonen anime over and over again"
I'm pretty sure that's just the Bandai part of the company.
It occurred to me that Bandai is approaching 40 years of holding the Dragon Ball game license. Quoting AVGN "Can't someone else have a try?" No.
Re: You'll Soon Be Able To Play One Of The Most Obscure Final Fantasy Games In English
I remember watching one disc's worth of the anime and the only thing I remember is SOIL! IS MY POWER!
Re: Two More Famicom Classics From Jaleco Are Heading To Switch
I'm not really familiar but I've been told that Whomp 'Em's localization is not as socially tasteful in 2025 than it was in 1991.
Re: The Composer Of Soul Blade's Iconic Opening Song Has Passed Away
For a moment I thought it said SoulBlader.
Still bad news though.
Re: Please Find 22 Minutes To Watch This Video On The Genesis Of Sega's Virtua Fighter
@Damo Is that title a tease? Is the video not about the 32X of Sega's Virtua Fighter?
Re: This Man Is Buying Commodore
From what I've been told the Amiga CD32 was withheld from the US market due to some legal issue. (I hear the NTSC version did ship to Canada.)
I mean, I know by that point Commodore was, despite being an American company, far more successful with the European market anyways but that does sound like a notable point in its collapse.
Re: Final Fantasy Tactics Writer Yasumi Matsuno Just Found Out About The Game's Most Famous False Quote
One of my favorite Laws in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is the one prohibiting attacking Monsters. Moreso thinking about what kind of morals is it teaching us?
How are you even supposed to win an encounter when it comes up?
I'm guessing you are supposed to use Anti-Law cards. Or Escape. Reroll the RNG.
But what I found is better: Get a Beastmaster to control the enemies to attack each other. Then for the last one get it to attack a player character with auto-counterattack abilities. Forgiveness mechanic abuse!
Re: 'Sega's Switch' Lives On Thanks To This Absolutely Incredible Mod
@slider1983 I just watched Ashens' review of this from like a decade ago. He complained he only had one US game to review on the unit (Ecco the Dolphin) but surely he must have a number of PAL games (such as his Sonic he had in the background) that would play just fine on the device (or in Sonic's case, better than on his UK hardware, since Sonic 1 had no PAL optimization).
But it's possible that maybe he didn't want to show Sonic running on the device since the Green Hill Zone music at least will be copyright claimed by the composer on YouTube.
Re: Super Smash Bros. Melee Modders Make Old April Fool's Joke A Reality
I mean, it does make sense if they left out the other Bond actors since surely Nintendo would've had to pay each of the former actors for likeness rights.
Re: Super Smash Bros. Melee Modders Make Old April Fool's Joke A Reality
@The_Nintend_Pedant I only heard of that later, from I think Game Informer, who reported that the missing Bond photos were present in the ROM data and there were GameShark codes to view the portraits but that was all that actually existed in the game (or at least the final released version).
Re: Super Smash Bros. Melee Modders Make Old April Fool's Joke A Reality
That wasn't even the first EGM April Fools joke to attract a lot of attention.
What about Sheng Long from a decade earlier?
Re: Tatsujin Reveals New Info On Upcoming Shmup Revival 'Truxton Extreme', Including A PC Port
@JeongersGaming That was the first thing I thought too. How excited is Mark going to be?
Re: Random: This Decade-Old Nintendo Handheld Is Now Worth Almost As Much As A Switch 2
I wonder if that is just the European price.
In North America, the New 3DS XL and 2DS were pretty much the only models sold for a few years, so it has to be a more common unit.
I only have a standard size New 3DS because it's a Japanese import.