KingMike

@Peteykins I know there are people online that will boast about paying for bootlegs ("repros") from fans who do the same thing.
I can even recall getting flamed from one such bootleg defender who thinks they're better paying for unauthorized copies than playing downloaded ROMs, and made some pretty nasty and off-topic comparisons that that forum really should've nuked the thread at that point and I'm amazed they didn't.

Would be interested but those prices are WAY too high for me, so I'll have to give it a pass.

@-wc- It's not English, but the hardest to read title screen where I know what it's supposed to say is a MSX2 RPG called Crimson (and I didn't know it had a PC-88 version as well until it showed up from EggConsole).
I think there was a Tecmo soccer game on NeoGeo that also had a pretty funny bad logo.

@-wc- I've yet to actually take apart my SP to fix the intermittent power problems it's had for years. Somehow I hadn't been able to get a right screwdriver (oddly enough for the one screw Nintendo DID intend people to open, I do have one for the screws they didn't). I bought a few spare SP/OGDS batteries from Nintendo but I wonder if those are old enough to have also expired.
What I've read online is that it's likely the inside of the switch has just gotten gunked up, if the power had been cutting out even while the system was connected to the wall plug.
(Both of mine had the same trouble, the purple 001 I received as a birthday gift and a 101 I picked up while they could still be found at GameStop, who thankfully hadn't yet been upcharging for the latter. Mine is a silver-blue I picked because I thought it was an exclusive color, which made it easy to tell from under the GameStop glass case. But maybe pink was too, as I remember that seemed to be the color people looking for one were quickest to go after back then?)

Rowdy Princess? GameFAQs doesn't credit Alfa System but I do see them listed on the boxart.
But MARS Corp. Certainly not the same Mars Corp. credited for creating the kusoge classic A Week of Garfield for the NES.

So Namco followed Sega's example Super Zaxxon. Did that go well for them either?

@Damo I thought there was an Altered Beast sequel on the PS2. Or at least a remaster on the Sega Ages line that added something to the game that might qualified as such.

@-wc- My guess is maybe it would have required a specialized machinery to produce the discs with the correct "wobble" as it's called.
I'm guessing that Sony had their own disc-mastering facilities and the capability to set up PS-specific lines.

@Lowdefal My OG DS hinge only cracked after several years of use.
My GBA SP and 3DS hinges have remained fine.

@-wc- To run on original, unmodified PlayStation hardware, discs would need specific "errors" in the disc mastering which the BIOS reads as copy-protection as well as region identification.

I do have the soundtracks to the BoF games I downloaded when they were made available on Steam years ago.
However, the games themselves I don't believe are.

I think, was BoF4 the only version to get an actual PC release originally (though I think it was in Japanese?).
Though certainly these days it would've been feasible to port the others? I mean, if they can do Mega Man X. I guess they just didn't consider BoF worth the same effort as Mega Man before that as far as porting the games over?

Though, at the least, those BoF OSTs were taken from a higher quality master than what was heard in the SNES games. So you can't say there wasn't some care taken in that regard.

@Lowdefal Did the SNK 40th collection (which I thought had it) do better than the MAME emulation most people probably saw the game with, where as I recall that vocal song was nearly inaudible unless you really cranked the volume settings of MAME and/or your computer?

I'm not sure how well the original arcade version of Athena was but I know the NES version at least sure had a kusoge reputation, probably at least since the late '90s when one of the earliest famous "angry gamers" Seanbaby wrote about it as one of his least famous NES games (I guess it was enough for him to get a job at EGM when he again reviewed the BOX to Karnaaj Rally for the GBA and disliked it so much he refused to review the actual game inside).

@Tasuki I think that's the game known as Shodai Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun originally.''

@PKDuckman I'm guess the two games that aren't localized are that way because they are text-heavy games not related to Kunio, so they were probably a low priority to this compilation.
(Sugoro Quest++ is a board game and Dunquest is a Mystery Dungeon-type RPG)

I imagine the other release is why Kunio-tachi no Banka is not included.

@JackGYarwood This game is most famous for its crazy localization.
The localizers went overboard creating a story that is nearly a parody of the Japanese original. They used quite a lot of American slang to sound firmly out of 1991. One of my old online friends made an entire website to compare the two, and pointed out one period magazine review from its original release that pointed out the story was going to sound really silly within even a couple years.
Or the English version story could at least be comparable I guess to the '90s TV series Mystery Science Theater 3000, where a bunch of people watched '60s and '70s (I think) sci-fi movies and made jokes about them.

There have been huge Sega fans such as the people at SMS Power! and Hidden Palace who have probably archived more Sega history than Sega themselves.

@JackGYarwood "D4 Enterprise is sticking with titles either developed or published by the series creator Nihon Falcom for this collection, ruling out the potential inclusion of Hudson Soft's Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys for the PC Engine CD-ROM² and Tonkin House's Super Famicom title Ys IV: Mask of the Sun. It's unclear why this is, but if we had to guess it probably comes down to the difficulty with licensing."
I thought the SFC game was developed by Falcom? I don't think Tonkin House/Tokyo Shoseki was a developer, just a publisher.

I think the issue is that the PS Vita game Memories of Celcetta(?) was developed as the new "canon" fourth game, I've heard.

I thought the point of making a console with games on physical media was that old feeling of "you buy the games and you know they'll work forever".
When Nintendo made the New NES, they didn't need to ask for permission for the old third-party game carts to work on the console.

Rockstar created TWO Austin Powers games as a parody of Windows 95 (and wanted to create two more, we've since learned).
But I guess it's good to see someone create a "serious" interpretation.

@Damo Clarice's Wedding Bell isn't really a new game.
They have just Joe Hoops'd a previously licensed game. It was a Urusei Yatsura game originally on the Famicom, but City Connection was reportedly denied a reissue of the license, so they had to change it.

@retrogamer1 Yes, something like "long before online console gaming" would've been more appropriate.
It was a unique idea, but Satellaview had its limitations, in that it could only send out data. Players couldn't send data back to the server.
SoundLink games, which allowed them to add streaming audio (and video?) exceeding data limitations, was great, but then that also meant games utilizing it had to be careful structured around admitting progression at the appropriate times during the audio narrative.

That's a shame that someone would sink to doing that but certainly cash is one of the most replaceable things they have, yes?

@Gamecuber Region-lock on Genesis was only through a software-based check.
From what I've heard, it's mostly games from 1993 and later that use the Genesis' territorial ID for lockout purposes. Earlier games were sometimes designed to run a single international ROM which would apply regional differences based on the console rather than the cartridge (like Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Streets of Rage).
(Though there might be some oddities, Rolling Thunder 2, a 1991 game, does do it, but I've read it's only the Japanese version, the one I own, which does a region check.)
Most games' lockout can be defeated if you have a Game Genie and look up unlock codes online.

@RupeeClock Lik-Sang was selling things piracy-related, Sony was just looking for an excuse to shut them down.

Nintendo also committed a Streisand Effect by putting a warning about "illegal copying devices" in the back of later SNES game instruction manuals.
People who had bought and were using those devices knew what they were doing, and those using them for piracy probably weren't reading the instruction manuals!

I've heard tariffs are one reason the Master System has remained popular in Brazil for decades.

I'm sad I'm soon to be separated from my socks.

Oh, I thought this was Arcade Archives. I guess my socks are safe then.
Too bad, would've liked to play AIR GARRET.

They weren't the only developer on the franchise.

They previously worked on some Bonk and Power Instinct ports, Wrath of the Black Manta and Eon Man for NES, Blazeon the arcade and SNES shmup. To name some other games.

@Zenszulu It's not AS surprising once you know the guy who owns the copyright to that MS-DOS fighter was also one of the earliest to create a retro aftermarket publishing scene by localizing unlicensed Chinese Mega Drive RPGs (or at least those he could find that he felt confident didn't use assets copied from other and especially Japanese games, a common thing you'd see in mainland Asian unlicensed games).

What do they mean that Broken Sword was broken?

Oh good, there's still time for me to be the first to make the obvious joke asking if anyone knows how well this game is going to sell. Is it going to sell...?

@smoreon Quarth/Block Hole is very different. You don't actually move the blocks at all. I think the game even advertised itself as a "puzzle shooter". You have to strategically shoot the pieces to attach smaller blocks to them to turn pieces into square/rectangular objects to clear them. (being wasteful with shots will make a mess you may not be able to clear up in time)

@JackGYarwood I do like that photo up there of the "Nintendo Entertainment System NES VERSION". What an excellent console name Nintendo had there!
(I know it's because of license-sharing with Mattel.)

Has Fortified Zone 2 on Game Boy been localized before (though I hear there wasn't really much besides the title to need it)?

Banishing Racer on the Game Boy is probably the most exciting one I can think of.
With Bio Soldier Dan and the Jajamaru games having already been released digitally (they didn't say never released PHYSICALLY?), I'm not sure what is most exciting of the remaining Japanese-exclusive Jaleco Famicom games.
Maybe Esper Adventure, the Metroidvania spinoff of Psychic 5 (an arcade game that got a remake recent-ish)?

Not sure what's left beside some sports games. They wouldn't hype us up for that?

I think how Sega pushed Columns (a shareware game they found online and then bought the copyrights to to quickly have a competing game on the market).

They wouldn't find a more worthy competition until Puyo Puyo a couple years later. I can still enjoy playing that occasionally even if I suspect the CPU is probably a cheating butthole.

@Serpenterror They were falling block puzzle games. How many other falling block puzzle games existed at that point?
Probably only as many as other companies were quickly cramming out at that point just after GB Tetris pushed the game into the spotlight.
It wasn't quite a defined genre yet, so it's a little understandable he'd react to anything remotely similar.

Sadly MegaPanel is another game that got made in that time. Mixing falling blocks with slide puzzle mechanics, a combination not advisable to play for a long time.
Why Namco chose to dig it back out for the Mega Drive Mini II in Japan, I don't know.

How did he feel about Tetris Flash then (or Tetris 2 in the west), the game that was essentially Dr. Mario with Tetris blocks?

Or if he's furious about Dr. Mario, what about that SNES Hebereke spinoff that blatantly copied Dr. Mario? Should he be mad at Sunsoft for making it and Nintendo approving it? (like the entire franchise at that point, released in Japan and Europe only)

Alien Olympics? The same obscure sports game that got released in Game Boy in Europe only? Which only recently had an unreleased Game Gear version turn up?

@GhaleonUnlimited Indeed as the 1989 Mega Drive port credits Tengen, that explains why it was either never released or withdrawn from the market extremely quickly. It's hard to tell which. (though that version was often bootlegged with Tengen's copyright hacked to "Dr. Pepper Studio")

I've heard the 2019 Genesis Mini version was newly coded using only the assets of the 1989 version.

@Fragcula It must be a reference to saying that (the original) Atari Corporation was already essentially defunct as it was.

Reportedly it was released in 1996. Atari had already filed bankruptcy at that point. Not sure how much Sega could've even legally gotten at that point, but yes, suing a company that already declared bankruptcy would be embarrassing.

@JackGYarwood So you know that is the very same Brandon Cobb that went on to make aftermarket English localizations of Chinese Mega Drive games?
When he launched Beggar Prince in 2005, he was happy to announce it was the first new Genesis game sold to western gamers since 1998 (when the last Sega-endorsed physical game was released).

@Daggot I remember when my dad had to taken me to work and for lunch we'd go to the nearest shopping mall.
I remember even by that point in the mid '90s, the WaldenBooks there had already replaced its games section with a Software Etc. (or was it an EB Games? Well, both names that have been long gone. Still the days when GameStop wasn't the only game-centric retailer, and maybe not even the most famous name either.)

@JackGYarwood I'm fairly certain the Micronics in this context was Japanese, the company that comes up on Wikipedia is different.
The Micronics that developed NES games kind of has a reputation among retro gamers for being the Japanese analogy of Imagineering, an American developer of games most consistently awful.
(I can only remember Jeremy Parish reviewing some early GBC game when starting his chronological series on it, and I guess Eurocom wasn't his favorite European developer...)

I do remember after Wild Guns dropped on Wii VC, scalpers started flooding ebay with listings. 200 people on any given day asking $200 for the same game is a sign the game probably isn't rare enough to warrant a $200 price, yet people did it.

@Serpenterror Ridge Racer 64 was like 1999, nowhere near launch. There were like four of them on PlayStation, after that they were often launch games.
And I'm not aware of a GameCube Ridge Racer at all, let alone launch. GC had like Luigi's Mansion and Wave Race: Blue Storm. After checking GameFAQs... I found it and it was two years later.

@-wc- No controller/handheld size is ever going to be right for everyone.
My only time with a Duke was on a demo kiosk at Best Buy when it launched, and I recall I couldn't even properly hold the controller and comfortably reach all the buttons.
Yet, for GBA games only the OG DS had the right sized D-Pad for me. The GBA SP/GC/DSLite D-Pad was too small for me to operate it with the accuracy some of Metroid Fusion's bosses demanded.

@city952 But the mainboard isn't the faulty part. Playing with as much of the original console intact as possible is the point to playing on original hardware.

@Tom_Gamer Careful. If Billy Mitchell found your message, he could pursue legal action for that too.

That earlier prototype would be nearly a year before the film itself was released. I have to wonder how much would've changed.