I’m replaying FFVII right now, I’m right near the end any my play time is about 40 hours. It’s so snappy and fast paced while still feeling pretty epic. It doesn’t waste the players time at all. I feel like the remake completely wrecked this quality. It took a ten minute dungeons and turned them into a three hour slog. Not a fan. Did not play rebirth.
There are two kinds of translations. Official translations, and unofficial translations. Some unofficial translations are pretty high quality but many are not. For that matter, many official translations are low quality too. Of the range of options is an AI translation good enough? Compared to what?
I have so many thoughts and I’ve written about it in various comment sections for years… but basically it’s a big deal. The all digital future is not just a new delivery mechanism it’s a change in what video games are. In the future we will have to think of them as analogous to amusement park rides or maybe concerts or something - in other words experiences you enjoy for a time and then they disappear. Whether or not such an experience is worth the price is a question everyone will have to answer for themselves.
By the way in the long run there won’t even be physical files you download, everything will just be streaming.
I do wonder is done kind of boutique in physical platform could be created for new games. Obviously not AAA games but like indie games or something. The economics are challenging but perhaps not impossible. It really depends on how determined the physical media fans are and whether they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is.
I’ve been thinking about something like this for the last couple of days. The economics are challenging but if the big platform holders go all digital and something like this becomes the only game in town, then maybe that changes. I do think there will be a permanent minority who want physical media, so there may be unmet demand waiting for somebody.
Funny, but also obvious. Really I do wonder where we will be in another twenty years. I think we’re moving into an era where culture, aesthetics and just simple preferences may supersede technology necessity. In the long run AAA gaming will be all streaming. You won’t even download the files. Meanwhile, some people (a minority to be sure) will want physical media for reasons that have more to do with aesthetics, or signaling values than anything practical. Will evercade be serving that niche? Or somebody else? Or will it just be unserved, at least as far as games are concerned? This is what I’ve been puzzling over since yesterday.
@AxioMaxiM it struggles at stuff like this currently. I was exploring stuff like this too - like could I give it a pencil rough and have it clean it up into a digital-inked version? Or could I give it a character design and have it generate images of that character? The answer is no, they don’t do a good job with that yet. They can’t be consistent. You get a good output here and there, but not consistently in a way that could work with a larger project. This kind of capability is likely coming soon though. Most likely it will appear in tools embedded in special software like animation or illustration software. Because this kind of capability will require specially trained AI’s. So I expect Adobe will pay money to have an AI specially created to provide this kind of functionality and then embed it inside photoshop, for instance.
I think we’re quite a long ways away from AI being good enough to simply create assets wholesale from a prompt. That said, I also think there are many other things AI could potentially do that would save developers time and money.
@bring_on_branstons I'm an artist too, but I'm not sure I agree with everything you're saying. I do agree that AI companies did something unethical in training the AI on artist's work without permission. There should be compensation. I don't know if it will happen but it should. Also, I agree that AI "artists" are not really artists. Art skills (broadly construed) can generally be learned with effort. People don't want to take the time or discipline to learn the skills, that's why more people don't have them. Once upon a time, actually, music and drawing were standard parts of "good" education. We still have these classes in elementary schools in the US as kind of nod to the idea that it's part of a well-rounded education... but I digress. People who only prompt AI should not be confused with artists who have spent years honing their skills and JUDGEMENT (that's actually the big thing), people the AI is essentially imitating.
That said, it's not good for people to spend hours a week on busywork that could be done more efficiently. Once 90% of people were farmers, then agriculture got automated and these people became something else. That's good. That's literally what wealth and prosperity are, actually. Equal output for less input. I suspect that in the future we may find the idea that such large percentages of people sat in offices for most of their lives as equally bizarre.
So I think in a macro-economic sense it's good for AI to automate as much as it can. Now art, actually, is a human activity with its own intrinsic motivation and therefore it's not actually possible for AI to "take the job" of artists in that sense... BUT there are also people we call artists who are employed to make images for other products. Covers for a book, posters for a movie, etc. These are the artists that are vulnerable, but I don't see how this is different from AI automating any other aspect of work. Essentially, unfortunately, there are a lot of people (artists) whose work is not valued as a human product. It's just something functional that is needed more than appreciated and these people will find that their employers are happy to replace them at the first opportunity. If we say artists should be immune from this the question is "why?" and if we say actually EVERYONE should be immune from this then we are actually opposing progress/prosperity in general.
The best glimpse into the future can be had by looking at chess. AI's surpassed human beings at chess in a very comprehensive way. But actually interest in chess exploded, because these AI's turned out to be very useful tutors and tools for analyzing a player's games and meanwhile humans cared about beating other humans, not the computer. So the game survived. The same will happen with art, I expect. Certain kinds of art jobs may disappear but art in general will likely explode in popularity as people become more prosperous, and AI further lowers barriers to learning skills and so forth. That's the equilibrium I expect, long term.
I might be interested depending on the details. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being nostalgic but it’s been quite a while since I bought any Sega hardware. Might be interesting to get something new almost no matter what it is.
If I could take only one console to a desert island it would probably be a PlayStation, but if I could take one era it would be the 16-bit era. The 16-bit era was special. The consoles were truly distinct, and there was an enormous amount of game variety. Probably the best era, overall.
It’s a bit depressing. I used to think highly of him, but I was misinformed. I wonder how history would be different if the right people had gotten credit and been elevated in the company…
@Gs69 I was wondering the same thing, this seems like a lot. But maybe they are just anticipating the problem getting worse so they are pricing that in now.
Couldn’t you just as reasonably say “thanks to moronic industrial policy,” instead? I mean was the idea that demand for chips was never going to change, and so therefore nobody needs to invest in mining, manufacturing, etc? It seems to me that there could just as easily have been a different technology that lead to increased demand for chips/memory/compute (whichever one you blame most) and that would have lead to the same outcome, right?
Well look, I’m a classically trained oil painter (really) so as far as I’m concerned, unless the artist spent a hundred hours on ten layers of glazing, shortcuts were taken.
AI will make it hard to distinguish the real from the fake, even for experts. Laypeople will be in a hopeless situation. This is a real challenge. These ones “feel” real, in the sense that this kind of marketing was more common back then, but actually they are full of errors that make it pretty clear they are fake if you pay attention. The culture war angle is interesting, I guess.
I just can’t help but think if only we could go back in time and show people these techniques… I mean their jaws would be on the floor. When it comes to making games I’m only a hobbyist and I don’t really know how things are done, but I know just enough to get a sense for how absolutely brilliant this solution is. Very, very clever thinking. Anyone could have done it back then if only they’d been able to think of it. If a game like this had come out back then the whole history if the medium would be different. It makes me wonder what the machines we have now would really be capable of if developers used them fully but it’s cost prohibitive now so everyone just uses middleware which comes with a certain amount of waste…
I do not think it is possible to maintain this stance. I understand in so far the AI is visible - people do not care for the aesthetics of AI art. If AI code is buggy people won’t like the game, but that is because of the bugs. But AI used properly will be a huge timesaver and will make a lot of things possible that would never have happened before. Who cares if AI helped a solo-dev write a sub routine faster? That’s good, actually. The ultimate question is not how it’s made but how it presents to the audience. People should judge things on their merits - that is, if it looks bad to you don’t play it, but it shouldn’t matter so much how it was made.
@Sketcz when it comes to free speech and artistic expression I am a radical libertarian. The sort of person who insists on watch the unedited version of Cannibal Holocaust just on principle (I don’t actually recommend this by the way). I agree with you that things were better back then. But I also think it was never really as freewheeling as you’re describing. As an American I can only give the American perspective, but what some younger people may not realize is that in the US at least the defense of free speech in the 80’s, 90’s and ‘00’s was entirely political, a response to the rise of the religious right. In other words free speech and “offensive” movies and things like that were a way to stick it to the conservatives. It was instrumental and contextual, not a real principled position. It was always going to go away when the power dynamics flipped. Like clockwork, it is now the “conservatives” who are defending free speech. The true believers like me are few and far between…
As has been discussed a few times on here, retro could be thought of in chronological terms or it can be thought of in aesthetic terms, in which case the Wii is definitely retro but the ps360 arguably not. All had consoles essentially look the same. The graphics “improved” in the sense that they pushed more polygons and had better lighting but the overall style approximately identical. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone saying they specifically like the look of ps3 games. How could you even distinguish them?
I’m a fine artist myself. I know a few people who work in animation, and one guy who works at a company that does concept art or other art for hire (for big, big properties). It all sounds terrible. No job security, just constant anxiety and feast or famine. Tight deadlines, long hours. Pay is good kind of but not nice you break it down by hour… Plus even if you hit it out if the park you get nothing but what you were contracted. It’s a fine way to learn the ropes when you’re starting out but every artist who really builds strong skills should be laser focused on creating and owning their own IP. I’ve said this to the people and I’m always shocked how many don’t agree, I guess.
It’s a crazy list designed to provoke impossible tradeoffs. How are we supposed to compare Galaga to Skyrim? That said, any video game hall of fame that doesn’t include Galaga is a joke, so they need to get that one in there just to show that they’re serious. Honestly if I were in charge of an organization like this I would probably just seed the hall of fame with a couple hundred titles - the stuff we all know has to be in there - and then go from there when it comes to voting and all of that. Otherwise it’s going to take them years and years just to get through the obvious stuff.
Looks promising. Castlevania 64 is underrated I think. This is a really smart move, going back and updating that style of game. They never got it quite right even back in the day, so this is an area where you can push the nostalgia buttons while still potentially doing something new and producing (again, potentially) the best game in this specific style. I hope it turns out well.
I started experimenting with chatGPT a few years ago. It’s incredible. There are many questions ethically and legally around how to use AI, and I also think that it’s a bit of a buzzword that gets slapped onto everything unnecessarily. But in general I don’t think this technology is a fad or a “nothing burger”. It’s got tons of useful applications - and that’s if it never improves at all. If it keeps getting better God only knows where this’ll be in a few years.
I mean, in the case of objects with batteries it’s a good point. You’ve got to be able to access the battery or else it will eventually damage the product, defeating the point of the grading. But otherwise grading and sealing in plastic is the norm for all collectibles, isn’t it? Cards and comics and everything. I’m not surprised that the practice has come to video games as well.
First, play some of the games that I have but have rarely played (some of these games have been sitting on the shelf for twenty years or more).
Second, I am going to attempt to write a "memoir" (not sure if that's the correct term) going through all my memories of growing up as a dedicated gamer in the '90's. This is because, ultimately, I think I may be liquidating my collection soon. These are my childhood games and I don't want to lose all my memories and such, so I'm planning to try to write everything down. I may self publish it as a book or make it into a website or something. But the bottom line is that it's becoming impractical for me to continue dragging these games around with me. They're just going to get damaged in a move eventually, and I don't have a CRT and I basically never actually play the original hardware anymore. In practice, I'm pretty much all emulation now. But yeah... there are so many memories with these games.
I believe the switch may well get there eventually. It all depends on how long they keep it on the market, and whether they can lower the price at some point. I actually think that certain kind of person (like me) may buy second switches once the price is right, just to try and future proof their switch collection. It can’t be fully migrated to switch 2 at this time for compatibility and storage reasons. I definitely think between kids/families and super users they could sell several million more over the next say five years.
Edit: I bought a PS2 slim when they went down to $99 and I still have it, factory sealed. So it’s only fair I do the same for Nintendo!
“Hamaguchi explains that the one thing he didn't want to do was "overwrite the original game with my own fan perspective version of it and create a new version of the game which is essentially a fan fiction of it."”
@StyrofoamCup Interesting, I also consider the death of the Dreamcast to be the end of what I term the “classic” era of gaming. The PS2 ushered us into the modern era, although the modern era didn’t reach its full stride until the HD consoles came out.
Now the modern era is on its way out. Replacing it is something like an online live-service era. Time will tell what that really looks like. I believe we’re in the transition years right now.
@Sketcz strongly agree. I remember these days well, and fondly. The video game stores were full of games. The games themselves were different too - much more varied. It was an explosion of color; games of every kind and style. And it wasn’t only the video game stores! There were Tower Records and Suncoast videos, in fact every store was bursting with stuff. Malls were jam packed with people and a very specific energy. You would just run into friends walking around, it was a whole special social world. Anyway stores now space the products apart much more, presumably in order to disguise the fact that they have much less merchandise than they used to.
Wow, sad news. Ninja Gaiden ‘04 is still to this day the best 3D action game I’ve played, I think. Only the Bayonetta games come close. His interviews were always hilarious, because he was such a character. RIP
@Cyber_Akuma yeah, I’ve heard that it’s very difficult. Not being a technical person myself I only sort of understand but what I really don’t understand is why Sega engineered it that way in the first place? How was this unusual system architecture good for them anyway? I guess they had their reasons…
If someone can make a Saturn emulator that’s as automatic to use as the PSX emulator I’ve used for 12 years that would be exciting. It’s incredible that the Saturn is so difficult to emulate! But maybe we’re finally going to get there.
PS1 GitS needs a rerelease, pronto. The game is surprisingly good and holds up pretty well. I rented it back in the day but never owned. I would love to own this game properly.
AI is already so good that we (humans) can’t reliably tell the difference between a human hurrying or just being bad and AI generation. I will say this though (and I am an artist btw, although I don’t work in digital media): from what I have seen messing around with AI image generation I think it will be a long while before AI can do something like draw a whole comic book, or make all the concept art for a game or anything like that. It does not know how to stay on model. And the pace of progress seems to be slowing, as I think they are running out of training material. So I think human artists will be necessary for quite a while yet.
@The_Nintendo_Pedant I also lived the magazine and subscribed for several years. I still have the old issues. Among many things I also recall the Hsu and Chan comics being very funny.
I have their earlier jrpg book. It seems like there would an awful lot of overlap. I assume this book differentiates by going into more detail or something? From the brief description in this article it sounds like the essays may have a little more depth.
@Professor_Icepick This is where I’m at too. The first remake was not too bad after the patches. Still I’m not too confident. And I suppose I would prefer a collection of the original Saturn versions in the end.
@CO_Andy I’m not in favor of the tariffs (I’m very much a free market guy) but I think it’s worth considering that the answer to your question might be yes, UNLESS there was equal coverage of taxes that impact the hobby, regulations that impact the hobby, cultural rules that impact the hobby, etc. I’m not trying to say anything about this site in particular, which I think does a good job and which I do not think is too political. But just as a matter of logic, I think if there were say 8 policies that impact the hobby, and 7 of them went unremarked on, and then one gets singled out for attention, it could be the singling out that makes it arguably political, not the actual content on the article.
@lordlad I don’t find the politics in Metal Gear to be interesting or even coherent. Metal Gear is a paranoid techno thriller, a common genre similar to Tom Clancy perhaps or other popular works. It doesn’t seem to have any actual message or point that makes sense. “Nuclear weapons are bad” is standard sentiment and stopping a nuclear launch of some kind is a standard thriller plot.
All the stuff about free will, destiny and genetics is far more interesting. Do our genes determine our fate? And to some degree the ethical question around the use of violence are interesting as well. Solid Snake is something like an embodiment of virtuous masculinity. The games tacitly imply that snake uses violence virtuously, unlike the “bad guys” but this is frequently put into question by the dialogue. Although Snake is never really made out as a villain, the games nevertheless ask us to contemplate what the difference is between his (and therefore the players) use of violence and the antagonist’s.
That stuff is interesting, but I don’t think Metal Gear says anything insightful about the United States as a nation or geopolitics in general for that matter…
I guess my point is that anyone offended by the “politics” in Metal Gear is taking it too seriously.
@Sketcz I’ve not played this game or really any games like it. But I do think sexuality is really under explored in games, especially compared to how much effort has gone into perfecting violence. CDProjekt, BioWare, a couple others… only a handful of studios are even willing to try. I hope as games like this become more widely available we start to see more developers (and big developers) exploring how to include sex in their games…
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Re: Hollywood Legend And Video Game Star Tim Curry Has Passed Away
'Cause I've seen, oh, blue skies
Through the tears in my eyes
And I realise
I'm going home (I'm going home)
Re: "We'd Probably Have To Release Them In 4 Or 5 Instalments" - Final Fantasy XIV's Director On Why More Remakes Haven't Materialised
I’m replaying FFVII right now, I’m right near the end any my play time is about 40 hours. It’s so snappy and fast paced while still feeling pretty epic. It doesn’t waste the players time at all. I feel like the remake completely wrecked this quality. It took a ten minute dungeons and turned them into a three hour slog. Not a fan. Did not play rebirth.
Re: "This Whole Thing Has Just Been A Slap To My Face" - Dreamcast RPG Tricolore Crise Just Got An AI Fan Patch, & People Aren't Happy
There are two kinds of translations. Official translations, and unofficial translations. Some unofficial translations are pretty high quality but many are not. For that matter, many official translations are low quality too. Of the range of options is an AI translation good enough? Compared to what?
Re: I'm Really Not Sure How I Feel About Sony Killing Physical Media
I have so many thoughts and I’ve written about it in various comment sections for years… but basically it’s a big deal. The all digital future is not just a new delivery mechanism it’s a change in what video games are. In the future we will have to think of them as analogous to amusement park rides or maybe concerts or something - in other words experiences you enjoy for a time and then they disappear. Whether or not such an experience is worth the price is a question everyone will have to answer for themselves.
By the way in the long run there won’t even be physical files you download, everything will just be streaming.
I do wonder is done kind of boutique in physical platform could be created for new games. Obviously not AAA games but like indie games or something. The economics are challenging but perhaps not impossible. It really depends on how determined the physical media fans are and whether they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Re: This Disney-Inspired PS1 RPG From The Creator of Disgaea Is Making Its Way To Nintendo Switch 2 & PS5
I have a soft spot for this game. The sequels are also available on switch, which I never got to play. I really need to pick this up again.
Re: Limited Run's Co-Founder Once Had Aspirations To Make A "Physically-Focused Platform"
I’ve been thinking about something like this for the last couple of days. The economics are challenging but if the big platform holders go all digital and something like this becomes the only game in town, then maybe that changes. I do think there will be a permanent minority who want physical media, so there may be unmet demand waiting for somebody.
Re: Random: Evercade Pokes Fun At Sony Killing Physical Media On PlayStation
Funny, but also obvious. Really I do wonder where we will be in another twenty years. I think we’re moving into an era where culture, aesthetics and just simple preferences may supersede technology necessity. In the long run AAA gaming will be all streaming. You won’t even download the files. Meanwhile, some people (a minority to be sure) will want physical media for reasons that have more to do with aesthetics, or signaling values than anything practical. Will evercade be serving that niche? Or somebody else? Or will it just be unserved, at least as far as games are concerned? This is what I’ve been puzzling over since yesterday.
Re: "This Is From Zelda, If You Didn't Know" - Test Footage Highlights The Danger Of Using GenAI In Video Game Development
@AxioMaxiM it struggles at stuff like this currently. I was exploring stuff like this too - like could I give it a pencil rough and have it clean it up into a digital-inked version? Or could I give it a character design and have it generate images of that character? The answer is no, they don’t do a good job with that yet. They can’t be consistent. You get a good output here and there, but not consistently in a way that could work with a larger project. This kind of capability is likely coming soon though. Most likely it will appear in tools embedded in special software like animation or illustration software. Because this kind of capability will require specially trained AI’s. So I expect Adobe will pay money to have an AI specially created to provide this kind of functionality and then embed it inside photoshop, for instance.
Re: "This Is From Zelda, If You Didn't Know" - Test Footage Highlights The Danger Of Using GenAI In Video Game Development
I think we’re quite a long ways away from AI being good enough to simply create assets wholesale from a prompt. That said, I also think there are many other things AI could potentially do that would save developers time and money.
Re: "How Embarrassing" - Sega's Getting Some Serious Blowback For Using GenAI In Crazy Taxi: World Tour
@bring_on_branstons I'm an artist too, but I'm not sure I agree with everything you're saying. I do agree that AI companies did something unethical in training the AI on artist's work without permission. There should be compensation. I don't know if it will happen but it should. Also, I agree that AI "artists" are not really artists. Art skills (broadly construed) can generally be learned with effort. People don't want to take the time or discipline to learn the skills, that's why more people don't have them. Once upon a time, actually, music and drawing were standard parts of "good" education. We still have these classes in elementary schools in the US as kind of nod to the idea that it's part of a well-rounded education... but I digress. People who only prompt AI should not be confused with artists who have spent years honing their skills and JUDGEMENT (that's actually the big thing), people the AI is essentially imitating.
That said, it's not good for people to spend hours a week on busywork that could be done more efficiently. Once 90% of people were farmers, then agriculture got automated and these people became something else. That's good. That's literally what wealth and prosperity are, actually. Equal output for less input. I suspect that in the future we may find the idea that such large percentages of people sat in offices for most of their lives as equally bizarre.
So I think in a macro-economic sense it's good for AI to automate as much as it can. Now art, actually, is a human activity with its own intrinsic motivation and therefore it's not actually possible for AI to "take the job" of artists in that sense... BUT there are also people we call artists who are employed to make images for other products. Covers for a book, posters for a movie, etc. These are the artists that are vulnerable, but I don't see how this is different from AI automating any other aspect of work. Essentially, unfortunately, there are a lot of people (artists) whose work is not valued as a human product. It's just something functional that is needed more than appreciated and these people will find that their employers are happy to replace them at the first opportunity. If we say artists should be immune from this the question is "why?" and if we say actually EVERYONE should be immune from this then we are actually opposing progress/prosperity in general.
The best glimpse into the future can be had by looking at chess. AI's surpassed human beings at chess in a very comprehensive way. But actually interest in chess exploded, because these AI's turned out to be very useful tutors and tools for analyzing a player's games and meanwhile humans cared about beating other humans, not the computer. So the game survived. The same will happen with art, I expect. Certain kinds of art jobs may disappear but art in general will likely explode in popularity as people become more prosperous, and AI further lowers barriers to learning skills and so forth. That's the equilibrium I expect, long term.
The transition may be rough though...
Re: Surprise! The Developers Behind Cuphead Just Announced A New 8-Bit Spin-Off For The Sega Master System
Very cool, I’m definitely intrigued.
Re: Rumour: Sega Might Be Releasing A Low-Cost Handheld With Removable Game Carts
I might be interested depending on the details. I don’t know, maybe I’m just being nostalgic but it’s been quite a while since I bought any Sega hardware. Might be interesting to get something new almost no matter what it is.
Re: "I Was Saddened To Learn That You Are Leaving Sega" - Here's The Letter That Brought An End To The 16-Bit Console Wars
If I could take only one console to a desert island it would probably be a PlayStation, but if I could take one era it would be the 16-bit era. The 16-bit era was special. The consoles were truly distinct, and there was an enormous amount of game variety. Probably the best era, overall.
Re: "The Most Miserable Person I Have Ever Worked With" - This Former Sega Exec Has A Dim View Of Yuji Naka
It’s a bit depressing. I used to think highly of him, but I was misinformed. I wonder how history would be different if the right people had gotten credit and been elevated in the company…
Re: Thanks To AI, The Steam Deck Now Costs As Much As $300 More
@Gs69 I was wondering the same thing, this seems like a lot. But maybe they are just anticipating the problem getting worse so they are pricing that in now.
Re: Thanks To AI, The Steam Deck Now Costs As Much As $300 More
Couldn’t you just as reasonably say “thanks to moronic industrial policy,” instead? I mean was the idea that demand for chips was never going to change, and so therefore nobody needs to invest in mining, manufacturing, etc? It seems to me that there could just as easily have been a different technology that lead to increased demand for chips/memory/compute (whichever one you blame most) and that would have lead to the same outcome, right?
Re: This Mega Man Hand-Drawn Game Guide Is A Delightful Human-Made Antidote To AI-Generated Slop
Well look, I’m a classically trained oil painter (really) so as far as I’m concerned, unless the artist spent a hundred hours on ten layers of glazing, shortcuts were taken.
Re: Random: "This Isn't Real, Is It?" - These Annoying Gen AI Adverts For Retro Consoles Are Fooling A Lot Of People
AI will make it hard to distinguish the real from the fake, even for experts. Laypeople will be in a hopeless situation. This is a real challenge. These ones “feel” real, in the sense that this kind of marketing was more common back then, but actually they are full of errors that make it pretty clear they are fake if you pay attention. The culture war angle is interesting, I guess.
Re: "That Made Me Feel Good" - Xbox Co-Founder On The Rare Game "Strongly Echoed" By Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom
Nuts and Bolts is better than Tears of the Kingdom, actually.
Re: "No Old, Stay Gold" - It Looks Like Sega Is About To Revive More Of Its Classic Franchises
@Azathoth I hope you’re wrong but I believe you’re right. Maybe they will wise up but it’s just such a waste…
Re: N64 Dev Spills The Secrets Of His "Skyrim-Sized" Open World Game
I just can’t help but think if only we could go back in time and show people these techniques… I mean their jaws would be on the floor. When it comes to making games I’m only a hobbyist and I don’t really know how things are done, but I know just enough to get a sense for how absolutely brilliant this solution is. Very, very clever thinking. Anyone could have done it back then if only they’d been able to think of it. If a game like this had come out back then the whole history if the medium would be different. It makes me wonder what the machines we have now would really be capable of if developers used them fully but it’s cost prohibitive now so everyone just uses middleware which comes with a certain amount of waste…
Re: "AI-Coded Slop, No Thanks" - Animal Crossing's Native PC Port Was Made Using Claude Code
I do not think it is possible to maintain this stance. I understand in so far the AI is visible - people do not care for the aesthetics of AI art. If AI code is buggy people won’t like the game, but that is because of the bugs. But AI used properly will be a huge timesaver and will make a lot of things possible that would never have happened before. Who cares if AI helped a solo-dev write a sub routine faster? That’s good, actually. The ultimate question is not how it’s made but how it presents to the audience. People should judge things on their merits - that is, if it looks bad to you don’t play it, but it shouldn’t matter so much how it was made.
Re: Xbox 360, PS3 And Nintendo Wii U Are "Officially Retro", Says GameStop
@Sketcz when it comes to free speech and artistic expression I am a radical libertarian. The sort of person who insists on watch the unedited version of Cannibal Holocaust just on principle (I don’t actually recommend this by the way). I agree with you that things were better back then. But I also think it was never really as freewheeling as you’re describing. As an American I can only give the American perspective, but what some younger people may not realize is that in the US at least the defense of free speech in the 80’s, 90’s and ‘00’s was entirely political, a response to the rise of the religious right. In other words free speech and “offensive” movies and things like that were a way to stick it to the conservatives. It was instrumental and contextual, not a real principled position. It was always going to go away when the power dynamics flipped. Like clockwork, it is now the “conservatives” who are defending free speech. The true believers like me are few and far between…
Re: Xbox 360, PS3 And Nintendo Wii U Are "Officially Retro", Says GameStop
As has been discussed a few times on here, retro could be thought of in chronological terms or it can be thought of in aesthetic terms, in which case the Wii is definitely retro but the ps360 arguably not. All had consoles essentially look the same. The graphics “improved” in the sense that they pushed more polygons and had better lighting but the overall style approximately identical. It’s hard for me to imagine anyone saying they specifically like the look of ps3 games. How could you even distinguish them?
Re: Feature: "What Naughty Dog Did Was Inexcusable" - Crash Bandicoot And Jak & Daxter Artist Charles Zembillas On Why Independence Is The Key
I’m a fine artist myself. I know a few people who work in animation, and one guy who works at a company that does concept art or other art for hire (for big, big properties). It all sounds terrible. No job security, just constant anxiety and feast or famine. Tight deadlines, long hours. Pay is good kind of but not nice you break it down by hour… Plus even if you hit it out if the park you get nothing but what you were contracted. It’s a fine way to learn the ropes when you’re starting out but every artist who really builds strong skills should be laser focused on creating and owning their own IP. I’ve said this to the people and I’m always shocked how many don’t agree, I guess.
Re: Tokimeki Memorial, FIFA And Dragon Quest Could Make It Into The World Video Game Hall Of Fame
It’s a crazy list designed to provoke impossible tradeoffs. How are we supposed to compare Galaga to Skyrim? That said, any video game hall of fame that doesn’t include Galaga is a joke, so they need to get that one in there just to show that they’re serious. Honestly if I were in charge of an organization like this I would probably just seed the hall of fame with a couple hundred titles - the stuff we all know has to be in there - and then go from there when it comes to voting and all of that. Otherwise it’s going to take them years and years just to get through the obvious stuff.
Re: "What In The F*ck Have They Done" - Panzer Dragoon Zwei Remake's Steam Demo Has Upset Some Fans
@smoreon agreed.
Re: Community Challenge: How Far Can You Get In Ghosts 'N Goblins NES Without Taking A Hit?
Ha, like second or third screen I’d say…
Re: "Tell Every Castlevania Fan You Know" - Night Hazard Is An Upcoming Action Platformer, Inspired By 3D-Vanias
Looks promising. Castlevania 64 is underrated I think. This is a really smart move, going back and updating that style of game. They never got it quite right even back in the day, so this is an area where you can push the nostalgia buttons while still potentially doing something new and producing (again, potentially) the best game in this specific style. I hope it turns out well.
Re: "All Smoke And Mirrors" - Square Localisation Veteran Thinks History Is Repeating Itself With AI
I started experimenting with chatGPT a few years ago. It’s incredible. There are many questions ethically and legally around how to use AI, and I also think that it’s a bit of a buzzword that gets slapped onto everything unnecessarily. But in general I don’t think this technology is a fad or a “nothing burger”. It’s got tons of useful applications - and that’s if it never improves at all. If it keeps getting better God only knows where this’ll be in a few years.
Re: Holy Magic Century, Batman! The Infamous Quest 64 Is Being Recompiled For PC
I’ve always liked this game. It’s not amazing but it’s fine. I like the colors. I don’t think it really deserves the hate.
Re: "Beyond Incredibly Dumb" - The Internet Doesn't Like People Sealing Up Graded 3DS Consoles
I mean, in the case of objects with batteries it’s a good point. You’ve got to be able to access the battery or else it will eventually damage the product, defeating the point of the grading. But otherwise grading and sealing in plastic is the norm for all collectibles, isn’t it? Cards and comics and everything. I’m not surprised that the practice has come to video games as well.
Re: Talking Point: What Are Your Retro Gaming Resolutions For The New Year?
I have two big goals -
First, play some of the games that I have but have rarely played (some of these games have been sitting on the shelf for twenty years or more).
Second, I am going to attempt to write a "memoir" (not sure if that's the correct term) going through all my memories of growing up as a dedicated gamer in the '90's. This is because, ultimately, I think I may be liquidating my collection soon. These are my childhood games and I don't want to lose all my memories and such, so I'm planning to try to write everything down. I may self publish it as a book or make it into a website or something. But the bottom line is that it's becoming impractical for me to continue dragging these games around with me. They're just going to get damaged in a move eventually, and I don't have a CRT and I basically never actually play the original hardware anymore. In practice, I'm pretty much all emulation now. But yeah... there are so many memories with these games.
Re: "The World Needs More Games Like This" - Atari CEO's Best Game Of 2025 Proves He Has Impeccable Taste
These were fantastic games. They should do a collection on switch or something. It’s absurd that the whole series is unavailable.
Re: Sorry Nintendo, But It Doesn't Look Like Switch Will Overtake PS2 As The Best-Selling Console Of All Time
I believe the switch may well get there eventually. It all depends on how long they keep it on the market, and whether they can lower the price at some point. I actually think that certain kind of person (like me) may buy second switches once the price is right, just to try and future proof their switch collection. It can’t be fully migrated to switch 2 at this time for compatibility and storage reasons. I definitely think between kids/families and super users they could sell several million more over the next say five years.
Edit: I bought a PS2 slim when they went down to $99 and I still have it, factory sealed. So it’s only fair I do the same for Nintendo!
Re: "There's Basically Nothing" - Final Fantasy VII Remake's Director Reveals "Almost No Documentation" Exists For The Original
“Hamaguchi explains that the one thing he didn't want to do was "overwrite the original game with my own fan perspective version of it and create a new version of the game which is essentially a fan fiction of it."”
…guys, how are we going to break the news to him?
Re: Random: GameStop Drops A Clanger After Declaring The Console Wars "Over"
Eh, it’s joke. I think it’s funny. Definitely things are changing, anyway.
Re: "Not A Funko Pop In Sight" - Step Back In Time With This Amazing '90s Electronics Boutique Footage
@StyrofoamCup Interesting, I also consider the death of the Dreamcast to be the end of what I term the “classic” era of gaming. The PS2 ushered us into the modern era, although the modern era didn’t reach its full stride until the HD consoles came out.
Now the modern era is on its way out. Replacing it is something like an online live-service era. Time will tell what that really looks like. I believe we’re in the transition years right now.
Re: "Not A Funko Pop In Sight" - Step Back In Time With This Amazing '90s Electronics Boutique Footage
@Sketcz strongly agree. I remember these days well, and fondly. The video game stores were full of games. The games themselves were different too - much more varied. It was an explosion of color; games of every kind and style. And it wasn’t only the video game stores! There were Tower Records and Suncoast videos, in fact every store was bursting with stuff. Malls were jam packed with people and a very specific energy. You would just run into friends walking around, it was a whole special social world. Anyway stores now space the products apart much more, presumably in order to disguise the fact that they have much less merchandise than they used to.
Re: Team Ninja Founder & Dead Or Alive Creator Tomonobu Itagaki Has Passed Away
Wow, sad news. Ninja Gaiden ‘04 is still to this day the best 3D action game I’ve played, I think. Only the Bayonetta games come close. His interviews were always hilarious, because he was such a character. RIP
Re: New Emulator Ymir Now Boasts Over 90% Compatibility With The Sega Saturn's Library
@Cyber_Akuma yeah, I’ve heard that it’s very difficult. Not being a technical person myself I only sort of understand but what I really don’t understand is why Sega engineered it that way in the first place? How was this unusual system architecture good for them anyway? I guess they had their reasons…
Re: New Emulator Ymir Now Boasts Over 90% Compatibility With The Sega Saturn's Library
If someone can make a Saturn emulator that’s as automatic to use as the PSX emulator I’ve used for 12 years that would be exciting. It’s incredible that the Saturn is so difficult to emulate! But maybe we’re finally going to get there.
Re: Ghost In The Shell On PS1 Happened Because Masamune Shirow Loved Jumping Flash
PS1 GitS needs a rerelease, pronto. The game is surprisingly good and holds up pretty well. I rented it back in the day but never owned. I would love to own this game properly.
Re: Code Mystics "Horrified" By Accusation Its New Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 Port Uses AI-Generated Art
AI is already so good that we (humans) can’t reliably tell the difference between a human hurrying or just being bad and AI generation. I will say this though (and I am an artist btw, although I don’t work in digital media): from what I have seen messing around with AI image generation I think it will be a long while before AI can do something like draw a whole comic book, or make all the concept art for a game or anything like that. It does not know how to stay on model. And the pace of progress seems to be slowing, as I think they are running out of training material. So I think human artists will be necessary for quite a while yet.
Re: Electronic Gaming Monthly Is Getting Its Own YouTube Documentary, Thanks To Game Sack And My Life In Gaming
@The_Nintendo_Pedant I also lived the magazine and subscribed for several years. I still have the old issues. Among many things I also recall the Hsu and Chan comics being very funny.
Re: Bitmap Books Next Release Aims To Be The "Definitive Book Of SNES RPGs"
I have their earlier jrpg book. It seems like there would an awful lot of overlap. I assume this book differentiates by going into more detail or something? From the brief description in this article it sounds like the essays may have a little more depth.
Re: "Reject This Ugly Husk And Play The Original" - Panzer Dragoon II Zwei Remake Isn't Going Down Well With Fans
@Professor_Icepick This is where I’m at too. The first remake was not too bad after the patches. Still I’m not too confident. And I suppose I would prefer a collection of the original Saturn versions in the end.
Re: "I Hope Elon Musk Never Googles Me, Because I'll Be Murdered", Says Deus Ex Co-Writer
@CO_Andy I’m not in favor of the tariffs (I’m very much a free market guy) but I think it’s worth considering that the answer to your question might be yes, UNLESS there was equal coverage of taxes that impact the hobby, regulations that impact the hobby, cultural rules that impact the hobby, etc. I’m not trying to say anything about this site in particular, which I think does a good job and which I do not think is too political. But just as a matter of logic, I think if there were say 8 policies that impact the hobby, and 7 of them went unremarked on, and then one gets singled out for attention, it could be the singling out that makes it arguably political, not the actual content on the article.
Re: "I Hope Elon Musk Never Googles Me, Because I'll Be Murdered", Says Deus Ex Co-Writer
@lordlad I don’t find the politics in Metal Gear to be interesting or even coherent. Metal Gear is a paranoid techno thriller, a common genre similar to Tom Clancy perhaps or other popular works. It doesn’t seem to have any actual message or point that makes sense. “Nuclear weapons are bad” is standard sentiment and stopping a nuclear launch of some kind is a standard thriller plot.
All the stuff about free will, destiny and genetics is far more interesting. Do our genes determine our fate? And to some degree the ethical question around the use of violence are interesting as well. Solid Snake is something like an embodiment of virtuous masculinity. The games tacitly imply that snake uses violence virtuously, unlike the “bad guys” but this is frequently put into question by the dialogue. Although Snake is never really made out as a villain, the games nevertheless ask us to contemplate what the difference is between his (and therefore the players) use of violence and the antagonist’s.
That stuff is interesting, but I don’t think Metal Gear says anything insightful about the United States as a nation or geopolitics in general for that matter…
I guess my point is that anyone offended by the “politics” in Metal Gear is taking it too seriously.
Re: NSFW Dating Sim 'Gambler: Queen's Cup' Has Been Translated Into English
@Sketcz I’ve not played this game or really any games like it. But I do think sexuality is really under explored in games, especially compared to how much effort has gone into perfecting violence. CDProjekt, BioWare, a couple others… only a handful of studios are even willing to try. I hope as games like this become more widely available we start to see more developers (and big developers) exploring how to include sex in their games…