Comments 935

Re: SuperSega FPGA Console Shown Running Master System, Genesis And Saturn Games

KingMike

@slider1983 I'm fairly certain Virtua Racing on the Genesis was the only Sega cartridge to use a custom video chip.
It's been said by SMS Power forum that it's likely Codemaster tested/RE'd their games on a late model PAL SMS without realizing they were using a video mode only in certain consoles.
Checking GameFAQs, Codemasters' SMS games were all released in 1993! EXTREMELY late to enter that market! That would make sense.
I do believe limited emulated support would be because Codemasters were the only ones that mode. I'm going to guess it probably wasn't a documented feature, thus why it didn't get spread. These were the Game Genie people, breaking stuff is kind of what they did.

Re: The US Copyright Office Doesn't Want To Give You Access To Video Game History

KingMike

@N64-ROX I could go to a library and check out a book and make copies too.
I would take a long time and I wouldn't do it but I could. Why hasn't the book industry shut down public libraries?
(not like the book industry doesn't have its own evils: college textbooks are expensive because Wiley et all price them based on how much they think your country can afford to pay for them and would like that you not support gray market importers)

Re: The Making Of: The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse, Capcom's SNES Classic

KingMike

The GBA port of Magical Quest 3 I believe didn't arrive until 2005, which would explain how it remained in obscurity. That was fairly late in the GBA lifespan.
I think the fan translation of the SNES version was released in like 2002, and I recall it was pretty distinctly written by a UK translator (might be a surprise for such a famous "American" IP).

Also, I recall trying the Hard difficulty in Magical Quest once, and I recall barely finishing stage 1.
I remember on Hard the game definitely channeled Mega Man energy in its difficulty.

Re: The Making Of: The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse, Capcom's SNES Classic

KingMike

@JackGYarwood A Genesis port of The Magical Quest was announced in early 1994 (I'm quite positive the magazine previews I read were 1994, not a more timely 1992/1993). I can only imagine it went unreleased because it was too close to the the sequel The Great Circus Mystery (for which a port was released).
Early 1993 was when Capcom had entered the Sega publishing scene (or at least when their licensee status was publicly revealed), and of course Street Fighter II: Champion Edition HAD to be its big entry game.

Re: "The Wrong Console Won" - Dreamcast Is Getting Its Own Rave Event "To Correct The Record"

KingMike

@RejectedAng3L Not released in America despite those had to have been in the works as their plan to rework the hardware into a home computer.
They had to have thought was going to be a better entry going into the 1984 US gaming market.

That and also cartridge hardware very quickly caught up to much of the FDS' advantages (aside from cheaper game prices, which was understandably a very divisive point for game publishers).

Re: Pre-Orders For FPGA N64 'Analogue 3D' Open Next Week, Will Cost $250

KingMike

@nocdaes Analog is priced catering towards an enthusiast market who knows what they're doing with old games.

Nintendo or Sega releasing a console that plays thirty year old cartridges would have to be ready for a flood of questions from people who don't know the maintenance issues.
It's why the Atari Flashback 2 released in like 2005 was designed to be modded to add a cartridge port to play 2600 carts. It was presumed one who had the technical knowledge to add a cartridge slot would know to deal with the old tech issues on their own (ie, they don't need to be told hold to clean their games). Users who don't would only be playing it stock with the onboard games.

Re: MiSTer FPGA SNES Core Gets A Much-Requested Feature

KingMike

I remember when bsnes was in development, byuu held out on added savestates for a long time because he wasn't sure how to add them in a way that wouldn't jeopardize accuracy.

I do recall how very early emulators didn't keep a copy of cartridge RAM ("the save file") synced to the savestate and that broke some games (such as Torkeo's Mysterious Dungeon which constantly updated the save data so you couldn't savescum out of bad situations).

Re: Special Broadcast Being Held To Celebrate 40 Years Of Toaplan Games

KingMike

Streamer LordBBH has spent the last couple years playing every "obscure" arcade game he can in rough chronological order, starting with 1980 and is now up to 1985 games. Or has series "Push to Reject" is, the motto is something like "the games that failed to make an impact on the industry".

He's stated that couple failed companies named Orca and Crux (from like 1982 to 1984) were basically Toaplan predecessors.

Re: "An Evil Disguised As Good" - Dragon Quest Vets Rail Against Censorship In Candid Interview

KingMike

@Whatareyouonabout Also, this man is producing a commodity for a global corporation. He should know what he's getting into.
The corporation has decided they have a choice between crotch skin or a preferable rating. The corporation has chosen the rating.

Nobody is stopping these people from drawing all the crotch skin they want. They just can't sell it in this manner. These people want to have their cake and eat it too, and upset they can't.
If they really don't like it that much, they can make their own companies and do whatever they want. Many game companies have been formed by employees who decided they weren't happy with their former employer.

Re: "An Evil Disguised As Good" - Dragon Quest Vets Rail Against Censorship In Candid Interview

KingMike

Lots of video games get affected by ratings from different rating systems across the world.
It's not just America, man. I'm more upset that a significant cutscene in Final Fantasy VI Advance got censored because of CERO. The fourth wall is broken the first time Celes appears when now the characters all look they're just actors rehearsing the lines. They can't animate anything they're saying because Celes getting punched unconscious was considered too violent for an "A" rating.

So, basically if America censors sex, Japan censors violence. Pretty sure there's been more than this example.
And rip Pokemon game corner because Europe and Australia censor fake gambling.
Every region (or at least their ratings boards) have their own thing they're worried about.

Re: Super Game Boy Just Got The Ultimate Upgrade

KingMike

@Bakamoichigei When probably at least 15 different companies needed to put out a soccer game for World Cup '94, and whoever Mr. Zico is, his game was such the loser that even when it was new, it got discounted so cheap in stores that an unlicensed company bought them up in bulk to hack up into a porn game (despite Nintendo having considered that possibility when they designed the SFC cartridges).

Re: "An Evil Disguised As Good" - Dragon Quest Vets Rail Against Censorship In Candid Interview

KingMike

I don't see why it's necessary. It's already pretty T-rated to begin with?
Well, I at least know the GBC port was rated T, I'm guessing for having "Hell" enemies. (though the E10+ rating didn't exist at that time, so I don't know if "mild four letter words" are considered E10+ or T material)

Is this the end of the "puff puff"s too?

I do agree though that if you REALLY need to see just a bit more female skin, Dragon Quest III probably isn't the place you should be looking.

Re: Super Game Boy Just Got The Ultimate Upgrade

KingMike

@Deuteros Another thing surprising about the Collection of Mana is that, for Final Fantasy Adventure (the original Mana game for the Game Boy), it has a few color palette options. I noticed one of them that would seem rather unfitting to the game for most people, but I recognized as the default Super Game Boy palette for third-party games. That made me wonder if M2 had any plans to support editing the palette SGB-style. That doesn't seem to be an available feature but M2 is probably the retro port developer most likely to do such a thing.

Re: Yes, You Can Buy Virtual Boy Merch At The Nintendo Museum

KingMike

@Razieluigi Feels crazy to hear Virtual Boy hardware has become so expensive, to one who can remember seeing Target trying to get rid of unsold consoles for $30 in 1997.
Probably about as shocking to learn Best Buy had to go as low as $6 at some point trying to sell off EarthBounds. And I'm angry to learn I somehow missed that because EB was one of my favorite rental games as kid. How excited I'd have been as a teen to have finally owned an original copy with the book too!

Re: Super Game Boy Just Got The Ultimate Upgrade

KingMike

@Deuteros Trials of Mana on Switch: that's two separate versions you're thinking of.
Collection of Mana is an emulation of the original games, with some bonus features such as additional "music player" ROMs.
The 3D remake was a separate game released like half a year after the international release of the collection.

@Bakamoichigei I've heard of them just throwing OG Famicoms in the trash. If they're basically garbage to the store, they should dump 'em on ebay to ship internationally for a deal. I'm sure they'd have enough foreigners willing to buy them up.

Re: Jaleco's 'Saiyūki World', 'Magic John', & 'Pizza Pop!' Are Coming To Nintendo Switch

KingMike

@Daniel36 Bio Warrior Dan was made by Atlus (possibly before they were an established game company), so while I recall it had some rough spots such as control, it's not too bad.
Cool idea though.
Also the music is by the same composer as the Megami Tensei games at least through the Saturn, so it sure has a similar sound to the original MT Famicom game (which released only a little over a week earlier).

Re: Super Game Boy Just Got The Ultimate Upgrade

KingMike

@Deuteros But Trials of Mana IS "Secret of Mana 2". It might not be on actual SNES hardware but it is official.
And I would certainly support it when a company decided to at all give us a localization that was 24 years overdue when it launched.

Re: Super Game Boy Just Got The Ultimate Upgrade

KingMike

@-wc- I've read in magazines of the time it was specifically for Pocket Printer support.
It was 1998 when the SGB2 and the Printer were released, and it sounds like Sega/Atlus' Print Club was trendy enough in Japanese arcades at the time that Nintendo would to push its own little knockoff.

Re: Opinion: Electronic Arts Used To Empower Developers; Now It Looks To Replace Them With AI

KingMike

@UK_Kev The did publish some SNES games but I'm guessing they didn't do as much with Nintendo as Nintendo was a LOT more controlling in that era. Though it wasn't a whole lot, mostly sports ports, Rampart and B.O.B. are the ones I remember. Also the Strike series but the SNES ports came later.
Also, it has since been revealed in the years since, they were able to get a preferential license from Sega because EA had already cracked Sega's protection on the Genesis and was like "we don't really need a license but if you give us a good deal, we'll play along with your rules and not spoil it to everyone else". They couldn't do that with Nintendo.

Re: Opinion: Electronic Arts Used To Empower Developers; Now It Looks To Replace Them With AI

KingMike

Electronic Arts is the company who weaseled their way into a preferential license from Sega so they could self-manufacture a version of Populous for the Genesis they knew was incompatible with a number of consoles so they stuck a warning sticker on the box.
(It's because the game lacked a Sega-mandated header which TMSS consoles checked to see if the cartridge was licensed. Something Sega fixed when they published the Japanese version.)
EA, pulling scummy moves since at least 1991.