N64-ROX

@-wc- are you really saying that you don't like having more diverse options available now? Because with stuff like this it's likely either release it in the original Japanese or don't release it at all outside of Japan.

Very disappointed in this, the stereo dock was always poised to be the secret sauce that would transform the Playdate from a fun-for-a-month novelty destined to spend most of its life out of charge in a drawer, into a proud display piece which simultaneously exuded indie cred and invited actual play.
But the way that it's languished in vapourware territory for so long, this news is not too surprising.

ShutUpAndTakeMyMoney.gif

@KingMike the book industry wishes it could shut down book libraries. In fact that's exactly what they've done with the Internet Archive's ebook library, which is the perfect analogy to this one. Most digital goods are easily copied with essentially zero effort, so that's what people do.
To be clear though, when I said before that the publishers are right, I didn't mean that they are morally right or that I'm on their side in this battle. I meant that they are factually right in their fear that freely lending these things around will result in people making copies of it. Hell I'd be one of those people myself. But luckily there are always other ways and means.

Good on them for fighting the good fight. But truth be told: I do not care about this one little bit. A lending library has no advantages over piracy. Download and store a copy that you can keep, that way nobody can ever take it away from you. The publishers are right in this case: people will make copies if you let them get their hands on these things, and a lending library will only make that easier. Luckily for us though, it's still pretty easy even without the library.

@MegaManFan and let's be honest, with emulation, if it's something that the public wants from this device then just give them a year or two and they'll build it themselves.

Yeah surely the amount of money that they'd make by cooking up another batch of these pales into insignificance compared to the flex of having their collector's items be valued like true collector's items by the public at large.

Yep I read this and am reminded of an article that I got into a comment war on a while back, where the author essentially blamed us the gaming public for the fact that hacks like these are getting done. Man nobody asked for or needs this information, it's truly just hackers showing off. Just because I clicked this headline doesn't make me complicit.

We can put the two words together and interpret them in different ways.
Bad Nostalgia as in, it would be objectively bad if anyone had nostalgia for these SW prequel games? Of course not. If any fans are benefiting from this release then objectively it's a good thing.
Bad Nostalgia as in, you know the games are bad but you still are nostalgically drawn to them because, you know, it's as much about a time in your life as it is the game itself? Or your nostalgia goggles make you buy something you actually think is great but turns out to be bad in the cold light of the present, potentially ruining your great memories? Or you see something like this or Superman 64 or Bubsy 3D and are nostalgically drawn to it because it's bad - legendarily, generation-definingly bad - and you want to see it again or perhaps even for the first time. All of those are fair uses of the phrase I'd think.
And then there's "cynical" bad: companies or politicians twisting your nostalgia to trick or trap you, like the idealised 1950s were for conservatives. Or in our case we have stuff like that Intellivision Amico scam. Or one might even say, Star Wars in general at the moment.
Which leads me to the biggest culprit, in my opinion: over-saturation of nostalgic content, each instance of which is harmless or often good, but taken together can get pretty damn depressing. How much of the media landscape is taken up by sequels, remakes, spin offs, callbacks, etc? Sometimes it feels like 80% at least is just milking old IP as opposed to coming up with new things. And things that I love such as Stranger Things (i.e. 80s revival) and the current renaissance of PS1-aesthetic and even N64-aesthetic in the indie scene, or the YouTube echo chamber with its gaming retrospectives and "old Minecraft" retrospectives etc, all of which I have really enjoyed but now it's EVERYWHERE and just gives off the feeling that a lot of people (perhaps myself included) are trapped in the past... Either that or just riding the content train as far as it will go...
Anyway, good talking point, I enjoyed it.

Can anyone explain why he is saying that there are huge problems with emulating an Atari ST on the Switch?

Utterly disgusting. What a crazy love-hate relationship so many of us have to have with Nintendo. When they're conducting the business of, you know, conducting business, they are a shining beacon for the whole world. But then on the other hand they are litigious trollish bullies, the worst in the industry and long overdue for a comeuppance, be it from public opinion or legal penalties.

@Deuteros sorry it was meant to be in good fun. The idea of princely nerds vs nerds of the soil had already been jokingly brought up earlier in the thread by someone else. I just thought that your tale of owning the best of the best of everything back in the day, months or years before it was available to the common man, was a funny juxtaposition to that. I didn't mean anything bad; was impressed and envious to be honest. I was slumming it with PAL Street Fighter on Mega Drive back then, a battered cartridge-only find that I got for relatively cheap at Cash Converters a couple of years after it was new. I hope this clarification makes your day better. I don't like to feel attacked online either.

You can tell that it's a fan project and not an official Nintendo release when Waluigi features in the synopsis. Stay strong, sweet prince, your time will come one day.

I gotta be honest, as an N64 head Croc was one of those games that I'd play a bit of at a friend's house and laugh at its clunky attempt at 3D platforming. It felt like the polygons were held together with string and tape. Perhaps there may have been a good game in there after all, and not just Stockholm syndrome for PS1 owners...

The only one of these types of devices that I've bought so far is the Funkey S from 2021, which also plays PS1 games perfectly and is the size of a tamagotchi. I haven't seen small devices much better than that, but I'm keeping my eye out.

@-wc- Yeah it's a weird market for these devices, isn't it. Although if you consider that it's been like this for roughly 4 years or so, yet the value proposition has remained at "plays up to PS1 games fine; maybe a little N64 and Dreamcast if you can tolerate jank" (unless you step up into the higher price bracket where the jank bar has moved to PS2 / Gamecube) thie constant stream of improved versions doesn't seem to be making much of a material difference...

I'd love to see a review of this here or on Nintendo Life.

Ha ha video streaming in 1999, maybe if you wanted it at a resolution of 50x50 pixels. This sounds like a very clever way to work around the technical restrictions of the time while still preventing players from just fiddling around with the system clock to unlock the content. Plus, connecting to the internet and doing funky stuff with the VMU was an end unto itself back then. Still I bet that a fair few people went a little crazy holding this pack of 6 GD ROMs in their hands and knowing that the majority of their contents were being held hostage.

I do often wonder what has happened to all the money that the "web3" first movers made out of thin air over the past few years. If crypto bros are taking their unearned fortunes and investing it into real, useful projects such as reviving a beloved development company then that is absolutely fine with me.

Ha ha, yeah I too "almost" invented the Wii and the Oculus Rift back in high school, until I realised that I was too far ahead of the curve.

And the entertainment industry continues its push to one day never need to come up with new IP ever again.

In my opinion it's absurd to place this emphasis on the position of the 2. That's some "L is real 2401" meta madness for something which comes right near the beginning of the game and which physically blocks your progress.
Surely it's either
a) the heart thing
b) brute force (this is Master Quest we're talking about, and there are only 6 possible solutions anyway)
C
c) something else in the game that we've missed.

This guy is my new hero.

If the developer isn't in the wrong here, they are certainly not very good at working with publishers... Or perhaps at choosing good publishers...

I honestly believe that roguelikes are everywhere not because players love them but because indie developers love them. Randomisation and run-based mechanics means that you can actually play that game yourself, that you spent those years making. Otherwise if you know every bit of the game inside and out there's no joy in ever playing it.

@HoyeBoye for sure. I even keep one of those little SIM-card ejector pin dealies inside my cartridge case because I can't open the thing at all without it (on the OLED model at least). I'll put something like Zelda or Xenoblade in the Switch, and then that's where it stays until I've finished the game or officially moved on from it. Which could be months!

That's a super cool idea. I often buy physical Switch games but then regrettably play them very seldomly because the act of getting up and exchanging cartridges is just so much less convenient than selecting them from the menu.
But with an emulation box, everything is already there on the menu so you're not losing any functionality with these NFC cards, only gaining an additional way to launch your favourites if you're in a fun mood.
Definitely will look into one of these when I finally get a Mister (or equivalent).

@PZT Thanks for the info. Looks like I'll be putting off that purchase for a little longer after all!

@Sketcz I loved Mystical Ninja back in the day. But for me part of its charm was its low profile. Here was the "Japanesest" game on the system, which was also an incredibly solid and funny 3D adventure; and nobody knew about it. Back in the 90s that made me feel like part of something really special. I like to contrast it with Okami on the PS2 - another spectacular game but it received a load of hype, so whenever I was showing that off to my friends it was like "look what games can do now" as opposed to "look at this slice of pure gold which has been under your noses on the N64 the whole time!"

@PZT Do you mean that Taki Udon thing?
What's your feeling there - is that expected to be "like Mister but not quite as good" or "literally exactly as capable as the Mister but for one third of the price"?

@PZT thanks for the reminder! I've been following the news articles on this thing but still haven't taken the plunge. With PS1, Saturn, and of course N64 now the Mister is just too good to ignore anymore. Time to set things right and make a purchase.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Us Europeans love our Opera, don't you dare besmirch it.

That doesn't answer anything! Why was there any English "localisation" at all if the original game was in English? If they were having trouble translating 1-1 to French or German, why would that mean they change the English version? There's no way this could have been anything less than "tone it down for the Europeans lads", let's be honest here.

This was a very fun article, I'd definitely like to see more like this.

That just looked like a regular soccer game with a reskin? Not sure how it's survival horror at all.
If he's looking for a name he can take a page out of the eShop spammers' playbook and call it Resident Football Kick: Evil Soccer Vampires International Sports Ghoulish Call Of Honor Haunted Hill Silent Simulator.

I'm definitely someone who can appreciate "so bad it's good". I even trawl the Switch eShop for cheap indie/shovelware stuff which might have redeeming qualities - even when they don't, the sheer audaciousness of releasing something so broken or wrong or even illegal gives me a bit of a kick.
But older console games - PSX or SNES era games - those are something else. Back then, to release a game meant physical distribution, relationships with publishers and even Sony / Nintendo themselves, hell even the craft itself of making games was so much harder (no Unity or Unreal etc) that the games industry mostly gatekept itself to a certain level of quality and respectability. To see something so broken make it through a system like that is really intriguing, and when it's amateur-hour stuff like this, really charming. At least in short bursts! But I can see someone developing an obsession with it.

Worms 2 was my introduction to the series. It was so polished and perfect for the time, it felt like one of those games which couldn't possibly have been any better than it was. Eventually I realised that it was so good because it was building on such a strong foundation with worms 1, but man oh man the art style of Worms 1 is hideous if you're coming into it from Worms 2!

Analogue's stuff was always for people who want to pay more for their retrogaming, with its focus on original physical carts as opposed to roms. Add on the fact that you're getting a beautifully engineered consumer product and an "it just works" experience, it really is the Apple Mac of this hobby and I'm not surprised that they charge a premium and find plenty of happy buyers. And I say: good for them. Retrogaming is all about indulgence anyway; if I can get a literal box of boards and chips for $99 to flawlessly play my roms and someone else can pay three times as much to get an object of beauty which gives value to their $20k physical game collection then we're both happy.

Did... did I just watch someone finish the entire game in that trailer, in hyper-speed?

I always knew this day would come. And people called me a hoarder for meticulously backing up every ROM and MP3 that I downloaded!

You gotta be kidding; Nintendo is doing exactly what they're supposed to be doing: concentrating on new games and new hardware, while throwing us a bone with GB games on Switch. If you want a nice new machine to play game boy games there are 10 released each month from companies like Anerbic, Powkiddy, Analogue, et al. If you want a retro celebration of the original DMG then go buy one of those. If you want new game boy games there is a thriving indie scene and rom hacks galore. Not to mention GB-inspired options such as the Playdate. Retro enthusiasts are eating well.

@GravyThief yeah I'm ready for some PHAT SNACC

Surely this isn't a "magazine" in the sense of a reoccurring publication e.g. monthly, right? Even in today's era of content farming there just isn't enough Dreamcast news to keep such a thing going.

@NinChocolate not that I would ever want to use RF anymore now, but here are pictures of the first 2 consoles I ever owned, the Sega Master System and then the Sega Mega Drive. Neither had composite, they were RF only. Later when I got an N64 and PS1 with composite I had to run them through the VCR!

@Pillowpants I remember playing Maniac Mansion in DOTT. Had a blast, but then I couldn't figure out any way to exit out of it. I was too scared to save my game, worried that I'd be stuck in MM forever and lose all my DOTT progress! So I did my best to finish it in one sitting (never going to happen for 15-year-old me) and then restarted my computer at the switch. Finished DOTT and gave that in-game computer a wide berth from then on!

I read that the reason (that LRG gave) for sending out CD-R 3DO games was that they legitimately thought that pressed discs wouldn't work on many models of 3DO, whereas burned discs would work on all of them. And then it turned out that the opposite was the case.
Is it true that LRG said this? Is there any shred of truth to their claim? I don't know anything about 3DO but I'd think that yes or no it's an important thing to clarify in any discussion of the CD-R controversy.

I remember when I had my GBA and flash cart, I used to spend all day trawling the homebrew sites and trying out anything which put anything approaching "3D" in the palm of my hand. I would have eaten this up with a spoon! The amount of shonky wobbly racers and wolfenstein clones that I put up with, just trying to get my fix of that third dimension, I tell ya...

There's definitely a gameplay difference between the MISSes, and it's as follows:

These articles always make it sound like everyone at Rare in the 90s was just having the time of their life.