@Bot_Bot_69 Ah yes, it was bulky and the tape pressed into the case if I remember correctly. Came with a little map of Avalon hill too, which I think you needed to type in a code to prove you hadn’t pirated the game?

I grew up just a few miles from Glastonbury and could see the hill from my house. Gave me the heebie jeebies as a kid, knowing that the lord of chaos was down there!

There’s never any love for Maroc from Avalon/Dragontorc

I imagine the artwork was made pretty much exactly like this… “dear ChatGPT, make a picture of Dizzy pointing at stuff, but replace his hand with a phallus.”

(Warning: you can’t unsee it)

Edit: I note that the offending image has been removed from the article and my comment now doesn’t make a lot of sense.. This is a family site after all.

I’ll never forget the moment that link stood on a ledge over a spiders web that might be a doorway to the boss and my brain is saying “jump!”, whilst simultaneously saying noooo, games don’t have that level of complexity. Blew my mind.

I often look back at OOT and think it hasn’t stood the test of time, but then I play it through and there’s always a moment where I have to retract. It’s (still) a work of perfection.

I note the article names MGS, Sm64 and RE1 to back up the dated, but seminal narrative; but honestly, all of those games are still great. They may have been “embiggened” over time, but they all absolutely still hold up to this day.

So this is what happens when your 2 groups of friends who never met, finally do…

All I could think about while watching the SMB64 video, was how glad I am that I don’t have epilepsy!

That’s the second biggest Lego monkey head I’ve ever seen… someone had to say it.

@Kotonete * Then again, I know I might be the only one that care that much about those features, hahaha*

There’s 2 of us at least. To say they aren’t essential is true, but the entire concept of the console was a NDS with a glasses free stereoscopic screen.

The problem is that “parallax barrier” screens aren’t cheap or easy to find for mass production any more and the ones you can buy have ghosting issues etc. Plus it’s a niche feature in an already niche market. A proper 3DS clone is something I really crave. Every time I turn my 3DS on, I get anxious that it might be the last time. It’s almost 16 years old now!

Just the one; Daigasso! Band Brothers for the NDS. A genuine contender for the best rhythm game ever made, turns your NDS into a fully playable synth Something the guitar hero series couldn’t nail was playing the actual notes, but this came with dedicated buttons for every note, including sharps and flats. You can actually learn it as a standalone instrument! The West eventually got Jam with the Band, which is basically the same game, but I get the feeling they deliberately made it less difficult, which in turn makes a lot of the packed in tunes kind of boring to play.

“ I can say that it is 100% my work at a computer, using some AI.”

Every digital marketplace is getting clogged up with products that are “100%” a persons own work that should have taken several people a year, but that person managed to do it in a few days.

Aside from having to wade through it all, I don’t really care, but that statement is grating. It’s insulting to people who actually do put in a years hard work and it’s insulting to the people you’re charging the same price, despite spending a fraction of the development costs.

Person doing the demo can play as any character they like… chooses Jeff. SMH.

I just wanted the @#*@ soup!

Having never played more than 5 minutes of any of these games, I’d be happy to add this one to my VR backlog.

The AI “debate” is standing in the way of the real issue here.

I have as much desire to play Goldeneye on a SNES as I have to play Doom on a pocket calculator. The buttons are all wrong and the graphics give you a headache just trying to figure out what is actually going on.

@notreallyhere “ The Dreamcast is 32-Bit? You’re sure about that…?”

It’s not strictly untrue. I think calling it 32 bit is perfectly fine for an article about a Star Wars port.

@Atariboy Ah, I’m sure you are right. I could have sworn I saw it featured! Had no idea so many were available in switch.Thats a big chunk of them.

@kirby2000 Forgotten Worlds was shown in the trailer. Also Guerrilla War and Ikari 2 are both still on eshop. It’s not going to get much of a workout on Switch, but assume it will work just fine with Mame.

Love this! Good luck Pillow Fort. I’ll be buying the GBA rom.

Looks lovey; not a bad price, but “definitive” is a bit much if it only follows 120 games. I’d guess that’s about 5% of them?

@Razieluigi Agreed. I was clearly in a cynical mood which spilled into my comment. I’ll never understand the need to grade a cartridge, then lock it in an ugly box. Greed just ruins everything, for me at least.

So long as a couple of people get rich and nobody ever gets to enjoy the games, I’m happy.

The original is one of my favourite point and clicks. If you love this genre as much as I do, we’re eating well right now.

@BFahey3 “ A lot of licensed games had a stigma of being shovel ware back then but this looks pretty solid.”

Honestly, I think 8 bit was the golden age for licensed games and that bled into the 16 bit era too.

@PKDuckman Was thinking to myself why I hadn’t bought this yet and your comment reminded me. ‘94 hasn’t been available to purchase (maybe on the mini console?) since the virtual console days.

For me, the poll misses the point. I don’t buy physical because I necessarily care about collecting games. I buy it because a physical game holds some real life value. If governments got their proverbial arses into gear and gave consumers some rights over digital purchases, my view would change dramatically.

As someone who cares about preservation, it’s also alarming that probably a good deal more than half of all of the first few waves of digital games are lost, potentially forever.

sigh Here comes the piracy debate again, I guess.

I just feel sad that none of the “Doom guys” made any money and now live under a bridge rather than the privileged millionaire lifestyles they deserve.

@EvilBit Thanks for the heads up. Looks amazing too!

If that pie ad was released today, we’d all swear it was made by AI.

I didn’t get Fifa at all. Sensible Soccer was a thing already and nothing could top that. Then ISS was a thing and who wouldn’t prefer that to FIFA?

@h3s “ But I think we are in a bit of a transitional phase.”

Absolutely and I think this unknown is what fuels so many one sided arguments.

And yes, Mythos has terrifying potential, well beyond hacking the Switch 2 and doesn’t even break mainstream news.

@h3s “ Well things change with the times”

People need to eat. That doesn’t change with the times.

““ But I care more about the original purpose of copyright (To encourage stuff to be created in the first place). ””

The US copyright law was ripped directly from British copyright law, which purpose was to prevent monopoly of book publishing, which in turn promoted more accessible education. In a way this promotes creation too, as the artist gets paid and can continue to work.

In my opinion, the problem with AI in general is not how it can help us do things efficiently and faster; but how it enables monopoly. Large corporations intend to use it for all fhe wrong reasons and after all, their goal is monopoly.

Allowing companies to use GenAi with abandon is simply enabling them to work without that annoying problem of paying people for their work.

Believe it or not, I’m not anti+AI at all. It’s an exciting technology in many ways and I use it almost daily, as most do I’m sure. We need boundaries though and they haven’t yet been established. If the companies piling their money into AI have their way, those boundaries will remain unchallenged and how can that not end badly?

@h3s “ using small bits of copywriter stuff has always been accepted (Like libraries were okay with 5% of a book being photocopied.) A lot of this is just updating long held principles for the modern age.”

I don’t get the comparison to be honest. Photocopying a book is fair usage for certain purposes, but replacing the authors name with your own definitely isn’t.

I’m reminded of when Biz Markie (or his publisher at least) got sued for using uncredited samples in the early 90s. The judge famously opened his verdict with “thou shalt not steal”.

“ You can literally never be sure it isn't ripping something else off when you generate an image, asset, or video.”

But isn’t that how GenAI works? You can literally always be sure it’s ripping something else off.

The 3 seconds of gameplay already look hard as nails! I’ve completed a lot of the so called hardest games on 8 bit systems, but can’t for the life of me finish Cuphead. I’m pretty old though, with the reflexes of… someone who’s pretty old.

I arrived late to the show with the Shining series, but absolutely loved Shining force 1 and 2 via the megadrive compilation. I just can’t get into “Darkness” though (and I’ve really tried), so Holy Ark is probably not going to be my thing.

It’s interesting that they made another Dungeon Crawler though, after the success of “Force”.

@ojisan “ if it's stupid and it works, then it ain't stupid”

Can’t argue with logic like that. Also, if it’s stupid and it works, then it doesn’t work.

It always breaks my brain when I consider it was meant to be a Virtua Cop knock off and became a seminal game in its own right.

They all sneered that the Wii was a GameCube 1.5. Now there’s a Wii that’s a GameCube 0.02 and suddenly everyone is impressed.

“ Rare is trying very original, new things all the time. And when you do that in the game business, most of them are going to fail.”

Not a statement I particularly agree with. I worked with game developers a few times and every single time I was astounded by all the talent and personal commitment that people put into a project, only to decide that marketing isn’t too important and is something they can do themselves.

The run that Nintendo had with Wii and NDS is proof enough that “very original things” will sell like hotcakes if marketed competently.

@KingMike witchcraft!

Gosh, this escalated quickly. Not much point in trying to shout above the din, but wanted to thank the site for publishing a well researched piece that clearly stirs a lot of emotion, as indeed it should!

II’m glad it was reported here, even if it does rub some people the wrong way. Our purchases very rightly should be a personal choice, without coercion from others. I will always be glad to be given an informed choice though.

Luckily for me, I can’t afford one, even at these prices, so I’m spared having to ride my own cognitive dissonance!

@Dr_Fresh Thanks. Was not at all trying to call you out, though I’m sure you know that. It’s really very disheartening to feel the need to be so vigilant about where we spend our money these days.

@Dr_Fresh “ and also I don't think Plaion Replai manufactures lethal drones, so that's a plus.”

True, but SNK are majority owned by EGDC, the same company who are slowly eating into Capcom (currently 6% owned). EGDC is owned by the “not for profit” MISK foundation and the person not profiting the most from that venture is none other than Mohammed bin Salman.

If anyone isn’t aware at this point of his track record, just give him a google; particularly for his coalition in Yemen, which murdered 1000s of innocent people by bombing schools and hospitals and a blockade that stopped medical supplies entering the country and resulted in famine. The list does go on…

“ the nostalgia of tape loading”

Yeah, I have lots of nostalgia for the Speccy, but that’s definitely not a thing I’m desperate to relive!

It was only a matter of time before he branched out…

That “attract” music is just iconic. If you were ever in an arcade that had a hang on cabinet, you knew about it long before you saw the machine.

@MontyCircus “ I've read people say that Kung Fu Master is the first beat 'em up.
But when I saw Double Dragon for the first time, I didn't say "Cool, it's just like Kung Fu Master". It was its own thing. ”

I don’t think there’s a strong argument against Kung Fu Master being a beat em up game, but Kishimoto also made Renegade before Double Dragon.

If I did play this, I would without hesitation choose to be the guy holding a wooden spoon at the wrong end.

I highly recommend maxutmost https://maxutmost.com/ for its huge (and entertaining) selection of retro reviews. The editor used to write for Destructoid before that website went to the bad place.