KingMike

@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).

That wasn't even the first EGM April Fools joke to attract a lot of attention.
What about Sheng Long from a decade earlier?

@JeongersGaming That was the first thing I thought too. How excited is Mark going to be?

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.

"This trial-and-error action adventure requires precise control" I'm recalling the AVGN originally (angrily, of course) gave up battling the hit detection trying to jump on a boat.
My friend had shown me that in more recent years he came back a more patient video game nerd to sit and figure out what the game wanted out of him to complete it.

Was the sport I know as football like the one sport Jaleco didn't attempt?

@101Force Still, it takes a lot to keep an online and physical market up. Hard to stay a "budget brand" when you have that. Do you know Ouya? Zeebo? (I think it was called that, a Brazilian console from like 2008.)
Atari would also have to remember to not shoot themselves like when the one exec commented you'd be able to play Pac-Man "in sandbox mode".

@Damo I do remember reading reports even when it was new, of another major flaw of the Nomad: they say the cartridge port was a little shaky and movement of the console could freeze the game. It was reported that stick some folded up paper or something inside the cart slot helped, but that sounds like an issue.
If only it had the stability of a recent Nintendo console!

"Want some MORE? Have some more!"

@101Force "Budget" brand? Are Taiwanese Famiclone-based plug-n-plays still a thing? I would be interested if devs on that would be bother to turn out good games but sadly those only seem to attract the likes of Nice Code who turns out consoles with like 300 games of sub-2600 quality gameplay.

@Norintha I do know when I was a kid my arcade had a 1995 Konami ticket redemption video game called Pirate Ship, so I assume Konami had also made other games in the '90s.

@PinballBuzzbro Well, these ports I'm guessing are reusing as much of the original NES code as possible. Whereas The Wiley Wars runs on a console with a completely different CPU so those had to be reprogrammed from scratch (and still had slowdown, and I mean even in the Japanese version, not even getting into the PAL version where that was expected).

@Sketcz There's one person dedicated to emulating the strangest peripherals for Nintendo handhelds. Things most people have never heard of (perhaps not the least become most of them were Japanese exclusives).
https://shonumi.github.io/articles.html

Raimais is going to be just the American/Overseas version, isn't it?
LordBBH has repeatedly praised that game, but only for the Japanese version. Something about the English versions patch out the level warping function which I suppose makes the game a little lengthy but there's some secret stuff that becomes broken in that process?

I do remember when the canceled (and barely if ever even announced) Famicom port of The Fairyland Story just turned up a year or two ago among a typical ebay lot of resale Famicom cartridges. Thankfully a preservationist spotted and purchased the lot.

It didn't solve the worse problem that, like other handhelds of its time, the screen (on my WSC) is very difficult to see. I got my system, a used Final Fantasy 1 edition console bundled with a copy of FF2. Text is really difficult to read on the actual hardware (though I suppose that is only partly the hardware's fault)

@Damo Technically, Master Quest was planned as an expansion disk on the N64DD. It was going to be like F-Zero X Expansion Kit in that you still needed the base game cartridge to play it.

He's charging per hour?
That sounds like something that would create a lot more work to monitor. How would you track that?

@Damo There's a story that this thing caused sellouts of a certain soup product in Japan.

Surely better than the PS2 game from whichever of the two UK budget publishers it was that is now rather famous among retro fans for its bottom effort games with licenses nobody was asking for.

The Super Famicom version title screen gives the Vikings an anime makeover that sadly probably wasn't carried over to the actual game.

I was expecting Lucky Palmer political things to come up quickly in the comments. I wasn't expecting the article itself to point it out.

One difference I wasn't aware of until it was pointed out is that the PAL version has a HUD with the score and life meter that was removed in the NTSC version (leaving the life meter represented with sprites). I know it was probably taken out because it uses the bottom part of the tilemap, which is usually cut off on NTSC TVs. But it didn't seem like the game was really utilizing all the screen space that was visible!

The score was still visible on a status screen.

But one thing I didn't notice before that was different between the NES and Game Boy versions is the Password indicator on that status screen. On the NES, it will only remind you of the password last obtained (which was originally displayed on the congratulatory message which appears after defeating a boss on the 16-bit generation versions). The Game Boy version, however, will constantly update the password so it can be used to farm extra lives VERY easily.
Game Boy however, had further cuts from the NES version and is the worst way to play this game.

That sort description of the game is making me think of Claymates for the SNES.
Between each platformer stage, there was an overworld where you had to solve puzzles to move two robots to clear the path to the next stage. Sounds like what would happen if someone played that game and decided to turn the puzzle segments into its own game.

It's nice to see this get a Western release, though from what I heard the original game didn't have any text beyond the title screen, and since Game Boy had absolutely no region coding you could import and play on any Game Boy in the world.

I know the Japanese version of Babs' Big Break had a password feature and unlimited continues as well. However, I suppose that was a reasonable point for Konami to stop. As much as kid me would've been furious and wanted those features, adult me doesn't think that was too game-breaking.

It sounds like this sequel went much beyond that, though I hadn't played this game really at all.

@Azathoth One grocery store rented out GB games when I was a kid, and even then they only had a literal handful of games for it available to rent. (Compared to the NES, SNES and Genesis, where they had many more games available. Those were the consoles you expected to see at rental stores back then.)
That was the only place I ever saw rent any original GB games.
I know Blockbuster rented GBC games, but that was, as implied, much later in time.

@gojiguy Glad I'm not the only one wondering where my Ray'Z Chronology physical went.

@sdelfin No pack-in game is ever going to please the entire audience. However, including a pack-in does allow the console maker to control what the audience first impression of the console is and ensure it is at least something representative of how they want the system seen.
If someone were to pick up Virtual Hydlide (or worse, I'm sure there is) as their first Saturn game, that is something only a small following would probably appreciate.

I can only imagine some British gamers' impression of the NES after getting the console with that first "Hero" Turtles game bundled.

Super Mario Bros. Special is a great choice for a gallery photo.
A deranged and impossible video game that will never be distributed officially by the IP rights holder is the ones most in need of preservation.

@Ganner I would hope that 38 years is a little late. I understand wanting credit, but that is a REAL long time they'd have to say they've NEVER heard of something.
Though things have happened. I'm guessing Capcom rebranding one of their games GAN SMOKU can only be because someone eventually noticed Gun Dot Smoke and complained.

The closest Sony had to prior game hardware experience was being of multiple MSX computer hardware manufacturers.
If this was in a trade magazine in November 1995, it was probably written JUST as the PlayStation had just launched in America, FAR too early to be talking about what the "preferred console" and having a superior library. They really should've taken a more humble approach, at that point it was basically "Virtua Fighter and Daytona USA vs. Tekken and Ridge Racer" (as I think was that the point when Namco was making PS-based arcade hardware?)

As much as we'd want to have seen Sega Saturn succeed, you know after the first couple points the rest of Sega's arguments are going to be hilariously biased.

"Sony is brand new to the videogame market". Sega, if you added the word "hardware" to that statement, you'd have a more plausible argument.
Sony DID publish video games prior to that. Few of them were games that gamers would want to bring up, but it's still the point. (I know, this is defending the company that published the USA version of NES Dragon's Lair. But I suppose we shouldn't judge a company for one shameful piece of software.)

Yes, only Sega Saturn has Sega games and ports of Sega arcade games.
Sega didn't want to mention one missing one third-party company though, the Nakamura Manufacturing Company.

Sadly it happens. It's got to be already like five years or so since western game preservationists lost out on an obscure undumped Famicom RPG when it was listed on Yahoo! Auctions because one rich Japanese seller felt the need to "protect" the game from bootlegs the only way they knew how: by ensuring nobody else can play the game, ever. Or even them, whenever the EEPROMs in the cart eventually fail. The equivalent of $15k to cockblock westerners who would've saved it. It was said that even other Japanese game fans didn't like that. Though with copyright laws there, it probably is the way to go.

@NinChocolate As much as a hot topic of $90 Mario Kart is, SNES games cost nearly twice as much after inflation, and while it's not that I like higher prices either but I feel like that when they charged more for a game, game companies had added pressure that they better make something that makes the player feel like they've gotten their money's worth out of it.

How I felt when I played Final Fantasy X the first time, after having played IV and VI as a child, was that FFX was a fantastic movie but the actual gameplay was comparatively meh (utilizing all the characters in battle was a great idea, but it quickly became a pattern).
What I had played of the PS1 games was still something I look forward to eventually completing, that PS2 opening feels like a dropping point towards video over game.

@Frmknst I'd have liked to play the Contra game on Switch, if I hadn't spent over half an hour on cutscenes (that opening had about the literary creativity of a typical YouTube comments section) and ENDLESS TUTORIALS.
It's CONTRA! Why does it need all 18 buttons (or whatever) on the Switch controller and tutorials telling me how to use them?!

We're certain we have the right Monolith here?
As I recall, there are multiple companies called Monolith.
Not the Xenosaga franchise, which was a different Monolith, a Japanese developer.

I do remember reading Walmart had refused to stock it during its commercial lifespan.
I suppose it is important to note that 1995 was the period when both Target and Walmart were beginning their rapid nationwide expansion across the US market. They had previously been secluded to regional markets.

Didn't the Crash games have tracked gameplay?
But maybe that isn't quite what he was talking about.

@Tasuki They absolutely had to have seen Mortal Kombat II and decided they really needed to up the joke factor.

@Scollurio This game was absolutely a s**tpost game.
For certain there was at least one Barney the dinosaur fatality, but I want to say there was more.
Also, one of the player characters was surely based on Tonya Harding (to say the least, an Olympic figure skating scandal). Can't get much more 1994 than that!

It's no Last Alert, but Final Zone II did have good cutscenes too, didn't it? I do recall one of the characters did at least have an anime idol theme song at least, so it surely had presentation.

I remember the Wii was revealed in five different colors.
It took quite a long time but Nintendo eventually released THREE of them.
Unfortunate for anyone who ever wanted a lime or silver Wii.

Even Strong Museum doesn't want to spend the money to acquire an English copy of Harvest Moon.

Glad they went with some of the stranger controllers in that art.
I see the PlayStation 2 Dragon Quest controller.
I have one of those and it is definitely a decoration because as I recall it got really sticky from the aging plastic alone.
You sure can play a video game by grabbing a Slime by its behind.

@PKDuckman I've been watching LordBBH play the arcade games nobody remembers in chronological order and yes, Kjonami's (sorry, Konami's) '80s arcade flyers sure had female models in very 1980s fashion.

I think we've had one official Sega and Capcom crossover game: Project X-Zone 2, yes? (Sega being the addition to a tactical RPG series that had already been a two game crossover between Namco and Capcom)

For Bases Loaded being the headline franchise in this collection, it's missing a few games. There was yet another sequel each on NES and SNES. (also Game Boy, but then I remembered this is Polymega, not Evercade. That may not be a supported console.)