KingMike

But does it also random screw up the imagine into random colored blobs? Maybe some screen jitter too?

@Deuteros Once online access became more widespread, print magazines surely had to struggle to get unique content.
Once anybody and everybody could post their own tips and reviews online.

Fortunately there are websites dedicated to preserving out-of-print video game magazines. Won't link for obvious reasons but surely the fans of them know where to find them.

That is not counting the Video Game History Foundation which spent a good deal of time a few years at least making privately available high-quality scans.

@ZZalapski It's not really hyperbolic. In officially translated form, it is a one-of-a-kind item. Sure, this game can be played in Japanese. Or you could use a translation that was made by fans. Fans who can write whatever they want.
But this translation would represent the official Enix take on this.

Sure the owner is free to do what they want with their possesesions.
The rest of us are free to comment on the owner letting this become a video game that only one person on the planet can play.
One person on the planet can play until the EEPROMs on the cartridge die, and then it becomes a video game nobody on the planet can play.

I'm not sure how this one-of-a-kind video game is different than "items of actual archeological value". It is because it's not centuries old?
What are the "items of actual archeological value" anyways? Like old pottery found buried in the ground or something? I don't know, seems like clay is still around. You can make those too.

Once again, the owner has the right to sell it and we have the right to discuss what we think of the sale.

You're probably not going to find the "Elite Four" Virtual Boy game which reportedly sell for thousands of dollars at this point.

I can imagine the failure: Nintendo Power was reviewing upcoming Virtual Boy games well into 1996 (including the action-RPG Dragon Hopper. Very sad to know some collector is hording a copy of that game, undumped.)
Yet not a single game was released in Japan at the end of 1995.

NP claimed Nintendo was planning for a "relaunch" in August 1996 (or somewhere about there) and that didn't happen. Happy 28th memorial, Virtual Boy! Your 3D games were sadly not for this 3D world.

@Damo Unfortunately, the N64 Controller Paks used battery-backup RAM to store data. The odds that data survived 23 years intact is probably low at this point.

@Poodlestargenerica The Controller Pak only had 32KB. You wouldn't be able to fit much on there if it did.
Even if it did only support the "mapperless" first gen NES games, that wouldn't be enough to support the largest of those, which were 40KB.

The N64 Controller Pak had 32KB of storage.
The Ice Climber ROM is 24KB.
Are they suggesting Nintendo gave the winners a Controller Pak whose data was 75% consumed by this bonus?
(Well, I suppose it wouldn't be the most data hungry. Why Puzzle Bobble 64/Bust-A-Move 3 wanted something like half that space... FOR A PUZZLE GAME? What does a puzzle game need that much space for... and supposedly it was some kind of DLC-ish content.)

I supposed most people wouldn't know that G-Zero was one of the two names (along with Zero Racers) for the planned Virtual Boy F-Zero game (would've been only the second game in the franchise).
Nintendo Power previewed it but it was one of the many casualties of the short life of the Virtual Boy (reviewed in 1996, oddly realizing how many games were announced for the US that year, even though all released Japanese games were released before the end of 1995.)

Not sure how many have used an actual Amiga.
I'm guessing more have experienced it through emulation.
Computers were pretty expensive in the '80s and '90s and especially as I recall Amiga was a rather high-end one, wasn't it?

BurgerTime is one of those games that has just beaten me up far too quickly to be able to enjoy it.
I did find the Game Boy sequel better.

@gojiguy It wasn't a blowout difference. Not like owning a Sega Master System in the US probably was.
If you had either a Genesis or a SNES in the US in the '90s in America, you could live happy with your console choice. You'd probably have developed a different taste in games, but you'd still have a good selection of games to choose from.

@killroy10 "The NES is celebrated as an unmatched 8-bit system... Yet, the NES itself - and several of its games - were inferior versions of the Famicom Disk System and its games because Nintendo decided to cut their costs for their North American market. Hence titles that lacked certain sound mappers, hence titles that were simply not brought to you because no one ended up localizing them, hence titles with atrocious password systems instead of save features. One can enjoy the NES, its games, and its quirks - but these are largely glossed over whenever its fandom speaks."
How can the NES (and do you mean Famicom) be an inferior version of the Famicom Disk System, an add-on that was released two and a half years after the base console?

The FDS has 32KB of RAM, which might've been a decent amount in 1985, but that VERY quickly grew to be inadequate.
Even by the end of 1986, cartridge games were already regularly up to at least double or quadruple that.
Games on FDS had to be carefully designed to reduce the data needed or have loading times. It's why Zelda and Metroid had so many duplicate rooms.

As to not supporting sound mappers on the NES... well, I'd imagine that Nintendo thought only the FDS was going to be using that functionality of the console.
You're complaining about a game console released in 1985 complaining about not supporting a feature that even in Japan wasn't used (by cartridge games) until at least 1988 (that's the earliest enhanced-sound cartridge game I'm aware of, Erika and Satoru's Dream Adventure).
From what I've heard, Jackal was an example of a game which took advantage of being able to access larger amounts of memory (ROM) more easily to be better than its Japanese counterpart.
Have you heard of Relics? A FDS game that wants to be a Metroid-like game but has to stop to load data every time you walk like five steps. Imagine if we had THQ-tier shovelware on the FDS, how much load times we'd get on that.

"Atrocious password systems instead of save features". Oh no, you may have to spend two minutes typing in a code (and maybe a minute verifying it when you write down the code)! What a horrible life to live in!
It's only really a bad thing when it's done poorly, like, well it's a Famicom cartridge game but the idea still applies to this "oh no! Passwords!" argument The Maze of Galious (odd, Konami should know better) which makes you enter the code after EVERY Game Over (because for some reason the devs didn't put in a Continue option, despite this was the same year as Castlevania II which did), then it becomes a problem.

The advantages of the FDS (extra sound channel and disk writing functionality) were quickly overcome by cartridges, leaving it with its major downside of loading time as well as piracy (which still happened with cartridge games in Japan but I suppose was a fair point for the CIC outside Japan). It also failed because of Nintendo's licensing terms with third parties: Nintendo wanted partial ownership and the ability to sell whatever games it wants on its Disk Writer stations in Japan. Publisher thinks their game is worth more than Nintendo's flat five dollar rewrite price? Too bad!

@GameGear1991 Only supporting a single game is exactly what "old school" flashcarts are.

So does this mean there's a good chance the planned US version Bio Senshi Dan, Bashi Bazook: Morphoid Master, will finally get an official release, 35 years later?
I do like my plutonium-colored Famicom Dan cartridge.

Hope at some point we see Game Boy games. Banishing Racer would be excellent.

I suppose it probably doesn't help Nottingham that those of us who don't live in the UK have probably only heard of the place through Robin Hood, such as the Disney movie.

Lesson that is in fact a real place and, no the entire town has not arrested by a giant wolf.

Don't put the Nintendo name on it, or Nintendo will sue you!

@SuperKMx That first part was a lot less obvious than the second.

Transforming a FPS into a 2D game is exactly what happened with Daikatana (in Europe, and possibly Japan) and, more widespread, Rainbow Six (I do remember renting that from Blockbuster and not getting very far).

Though the second game came out in Japan only, I don't know how internationally it can be said it's a good thing they decided to just call it "Tobal 2".

Checking that auction listing "Some intrepid hunters have even reached out to the 26 winners with the intent of tracing the journey of these discarded relics."
So, did they stalk and maybe even annoy the potential owners trying to get a sale?
Also good job doxxing the one-time owner of the cart listed, thanks auction lister, that's really considerate.

@KitsuneNight More like, the notable thing about it is the context surrounding its existence, rather than the game itself.
(Though that's something the gray copies represent more, now that I recall the difference. Gray: given to people who actually competed in the event and won. Gold: given to some lucky people who mailed a survey card to Nintendo.)

Of course with only 26 gold carts in existence, naturally none are going to be sold for awhile.
At least this one isn't inconsiderate enough to open and expose its EEPROMs. "UV resistant", the case makers say! I don't understand how resistant it can be if I can see through it.
(though it probably matters less now, in that if light hasn't corrupted the data on that copy already, time is likely to)

@HalBailman I guess people just never came up with a better term then.
There was a time when FPS games were called "Doom clones" until a term to describe them was invented.

@UK_Kev Jack didn't just attack Rockstar. There was also aggression against Midway.
I remember at one point Midway mocked him with a create-a-player feature in one Mortal Kombat game.
And of course, the one that got the Internet to take him down: when he refused to pay up after his bet nobody would make his one extremely appalling game idea. Which afterwards he was like "it was a joke and gamers are too stupid to know the reference".

I'm guessing one major deterrent to Bully was Jack Thompson.
The controversial game-hating lawyer (yes, I know he recently said he doesn't hate games as much as people say).
Behind GTA, Bully was the game he was second most vocal about.
(I do recall it was enough that Rockstar had to get some kind of order to stop him from pretty much campaigning against the company. I've wondered if the E-rated table tennis game they made was some kind of response to that.)

So you don't have to win them from Konami's pachinko parlors?

(someone had to say it after gasha is mentioned)

@Steel76 "looks and plays like crap" How can it be judged when it isn't even mentioned how far along in development it was?
Every game is going to have that "problem" at some point in its lifespan.

True about Sony's pre-PlayStation reputation.
Their Famicom catalog was pretty awful but at least a funny kind of awful (Paris-Dekar Rally Special has become a kusoge classic these days, I think.) Though the US version of NES Dragon's Lair still repulses me thinking it was okay to release that.
The 16-bit era though, a lot of movie-licensed stuff (I assume from Sony's movie department) that seemed rather unintersting and I hear not very good usually. Though I've heard SNES Hook was pretty decent (and its spiritual followup Skyblazer), though comments I've seen watching a recentish stream commented it might be given out extra lives like candy to balance out some design blemishes.

@Bunkerneath What was weird about Equinox is that it somehow had a really lengthy release delay.
Nintendo Power reviewed the game in January 1993 (suggesting they had played the game in late 1992), yet the game didn't actually make it to stores until nearly two years later. I wonder if there were some kind of business issues.
I know Lost Vikings II had a similar delay, but reportedly that was because the SNES version was the first made but Interplay wanted the game out on the next generation hardware and wanted to wait until all versions of the game were done to release simultaneously.

This is the first I'm hearing about this Equinox followup.

It's true that it probably was meant to have more of an RPG element.
The story text actually exists inside the ROM data (the game's text was written in both Japanese and English, as both language variants contain all of it, though not user-selectable)!

I can't be the only one to see that screenshot and only have two words...

I'M FRANCESCA!

@SlangWon Long ago, somehow 28 years was determined ideal copyright length.
Until someone like Disney came along.

@MysticX It had to do with how the original contracts to get the games made in the first place were made.
My understanding is that movies negotiated licensing and stuff to permanently own the rights to sell them.
Video games and TV shows were surely made on lower budgets and probably negotiated ownership to a time-limited deal to get a far cheaper rate, since they were usually made with a much more throwaway commodity mindset.

@N64-ROX That possibly was mentioned that like, 3D Realms wrote one thing officially and then the USA publisher exec decided to take their own liberties with the script while the EU publisher stuck to the official writing.

The Final Fantasy IV SNES fan-translation was a good example. Reportedly the actual translation was done pretty well but then another member of the team decided the writing would be improved by adding a bunch of memes and vulgar "humor" to the story. Stuff that really sounds like that editor was probably an edgy teenager at the time.

I'm guessing that means the Zapper, SuperScope, Menacer and Guncon are supported.

Probably not known is that on the Famicom, Bandai made their own gun which they supported with exactly the one game bundled with it. Some kind of machine gun looking gun. Crazy.

I've heard this game had fairly significant differences between different versions, at least between the NEC PCs, Sega CD and SFC.

I could've SWORN the game still gave passwords on Normal difficulty in the US version, and they just DIDN'T WORK (correctly) when you tried to enter them (they'd be accepted but still auto-switch to Children's difficulty). That is what I remember playing as a child.

@bring_on_branstons The train stage has a bug in most versions of the game (apparently the game got an official Spanish PAL release which fixed it). I read about it in Nintendo Power as a kid but they didn't specifically call it a bug. The cutscene engine specifically presses the R button when it wants to dash, instead of pushing the buttons assigned to Dash (they got Jump and Kick functions correctly programmed). I actually tracked down that bug and made patches the Japanese, US and English PAL versions, then when looking for the code in that Spanish version found it had already been fixed.

Konami pulled something similar with Babs' Big Break on Game Boy. It had a password feature in Japan that was removed in English, as well as having a two Continue limit imposed.
I looked at the code and it seems Konami and removed the password function in English (I played with bgb to figure out how I use RAM cheats to choose the new game option and cheat over to the password feature in Japanese, only to find that didn't work in English. Suggesting Konami didn't just do the easy hack of hiding the text/cursor and disabling its movement on the title screen).

@RetroGames The most bizarre Famicom cartridge I have is a baseball game by Sunsoft that almost looks like an obese Mega Drive cart because it itself had an expansion port, because Sunsoft actually released two update mini-cartridges for it.
Imagine DLC in a physical game from (about) 1990!

@RetroGames Famicom cartridges also had varying sizes, so it wasn't just Sega.
There were also some Super Famicom games which utilitized the Satellaview memory carts so they too had very Super Game Boy-like cartridge shells.

@Damo I remember that according to GamePro, Sega did charge $99 for the game in the USA.

@Dehnus "For most it was "good enough" for the time." is just as much of an opinion. True that it could be the GEMS sound driver as much as the chip itself but it nevertheless gives off rather specific impressions of the console. An average person asked what an average Genesis game sounds like, and that's what they will imagine.
Plus I understand that when the Genesis 2 came out, the variant of the sound chip was different enough that I've heard of some people wanting different consoles just to enjoy music optimized for either the earlier or later model consoles.

@Sketcz I remember watching an 8-Bit Guy video talking about some guy who, according to him, was able to for quite some time cheat landline telephone service providers by playing some cheap 1973 Captain Crunch giveaway whistle, by blowing the whistle into the phone whenever he wanted to make a long-distance phone call.
Apparently the whistle gave off the EXACT tone frequency needed for the phone system to think the user had paid for long-distance phone service.

This book cannot cover the game titled Run 'n Gun, which was a basketball game. (and understandably the NBA made them rename it once Konami wanted a license for the home version)

That same chain also wanted like $150 for a boxed copy of Dragon Warrior 1 for the NES.
Surely that can't be what a copy sells for these days!
That was the game that Nintendo had to literally give away to clear out inventory.

@Damo IT ALL STARTED IN '94.
But that first line says it started in '84.

@-wc- I guess there's technically three versions: arcade, Famicom Disk System, and NES.
Apparently the latter was an improvement over the middle, as cartridges didn't have to worry as much about conserving memory (taking up less space so they could be loaded into the FDS' RAM more easily so they didn't have to incur more loading time).

What I recall from LordBBH 1CC runs on this game, he said there are actually two arcade versions. One with a rotary joystick (I think) and another using a standard 8-way joystick (I think that was the one he finished). I wonder which will be supported on ACA.

I remember watching LordBBH 1CC the game.
He questioned if MAME was correct in setting the default lives to 2 rather than 3, but he eventually finished it anyways.

The game sure got a lot of distribution at the height of Michael's career (unsurprisingly). Pretty sure I've even seen it in a hotel swimming pool arcade (not sure of the wisdom of putting arcade machines anywhere near water but okay).

@PopetheRev28 Eight controller ports (I'm guessing four Dreamcast ports, and four DE-9, since I've heard everything up to Saturn used those), three cartridge slots and an optical drive sound like almost as wild imagination as the Action GameMaster.
Action GameMaster was a console envisioned by the Action 52 developers that wanted to put NES, SNES and Genesis compatibility, along with its own CD-based console, into a portable device. In 1993. Needless to say that device surely didn't get very far into development.
(I mean, if Bandai couldn't pull off making a licensed portable SFC alone, probably for tech reasons, that same year, what chance did the ACTION 52 developers have? )

@KGRAMR Sorry to hear that. I hope things work out well for him.

@JackGYarwood It's fitting. Reportedly the famous "anti-piracy" in the original game (which would give a rather crushing end of the game to anyone found playing on a bootleg copy of the game, presumably with altered copyrights) wasn't even actually designed to punish the pirates but aimed at Sunsoft themselves: the creator wanted credit in the game and they wanted to make it a costly QA effort for Sunsoft to try and delete their name from the game.