NoirConceit

Looking forward SNK's next tshirt drop, the Saudi Arabia blood money tshirt.

Another reminder to not buy anything until it is on shop shelves, as with 100% customer risk pre-orders they can always take the money and run.

@leogames To sell it legally you would need the official rights to sell it for money, that's how it works. Otherwise without the rights to do so you would be selling it illegally. You can't just sell something for an IP owned by someone else and say you'll just give the publisher some money, that's not how it works.

It's not a paid for game with pre-orders so I don't care until I see a release. Afterall, until then Nintendo could still send in the lawyers.

No idea why the press covers this when it would be better for all involved it this stuff was only covered upon actual release.

"The Sega Channel Revival MiSTer core by @iequalshane will be supported"

Weird thing to say since the standard Mega Drive core on the MiSTer supports Bank Switching.

@leogames When someone says they don't care about the money, but they want the official rights to sell it for money, then that to me says they actually care about the money, no matter how they try to deflect that.

@ElkinFencer10 "The legal way" wouldn't have been releasing a free demo already without the rights holder's permission.

Person makes fan game without obtaining rights, then wants to use fan pressure to convince rights holder to let them make money from their unsanctioned fan game.

It's a bold strategy.

Has he paid for work which has not been done? If he hasn't paid, then I don't know why he is looking for another avenue to accrue costs. If he has paid then I don't know why he is not taking them to court for non-delivery of the deliverables paid for.

Here's the link to the articles:
https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/07/new-james-pond-revival-announced-with-cod-awful-ai-marketing-campaign

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/07/i-hate-almost-everything-they-do-with-a-passion-james-ponds-creator-isnt-a-fan-of-gamewares-ai-focused-sequel

It seems it is Gameware who is handling that.

I find this all weird. Two very different companies, and yet the common denominators are James Pond and LLM AI graphics generation.

So is it really the fault of Antstream, as I don't see Gameware being called out by Mark Cale for their employment of AI graphics on James Pond: Rogue AI.

Did everyone just forget about the other new James Pond game and all of the AI assets being used for that one (Rogue AI)? It seems so as there's been no mention of that here.

Fun fact: To dodge licensing concerns for the first Geoff Crammond's Formula 1 Grand Prix game they shipped it with false names in the game itself, and had the real names for the season listed in the manual so the player could manually copy them over and save them to the disk.

Fun fact nobody cares about: The home planet of Putty isn't actually called "Putty World", it is called "Putty Moon". The Tower of Zid in the first game was being built as a bridge between the planet the game takes place on and Putty Moon.

Why the hell do I remember this?!

@mjparker77 There were not three games. The first game Putty saw multiple releases under three different names, but in terms of the collection it seems System 3 is using two of those names to imply the first game is actually two distinct games, when it is just one.

Full timeline for the first game, Putty:

Silly Putty: Released for pack-in with Amiga 600. Not the actual full release however, missing a few features and has a few differences with final title.

System 3 have legal issues to do with the game's name. Name is changed to Putty.

Putty: Full release of the title on store shelves on Amiga, but mostly the same as the original Silly Putty release.

Super Putty: Released on CD32 and SNES. The CD32 release is just a straight port of the standard Amiga version of Putty and does not even attempt to take advantage of the CD32 controller's extra buttons. The SNES release does take advantage of the extra buttons and adds music, and weirdly uses some assets from Putty Squad (which was later released on the system).

Every time I go to a NQ64 bar half their machines are either outright not working, or partially busted.

Lots of people suggesting Dino Crisis.

Just a small reminder that Exoprimal was very obviously originally intended as a Dino Crisis live service game, but pivoted after development started.

The similarity in plot and character designs are too much to ignore.

I seem to remember this person would rely upon research done by the sycophants on his Discord server regularly.

As in, people paid for access to that Discord server, just so they could do his dirty work.

Paying to do someone else's dirty work in order to get access to some they perceive to be a celebrity (albeit, a retro gaming one) is next level nuts.

You know the recent "No disc, no buy" we've seen used in response to the PS6 not having a disc drive?

We need to see "no Hall Effect/TMR, no buy" when it comes to controllers with analogue sticks.

Ten years is a long time in this space, congrats on his achievements so far, and the best of luck to him with whatever he does next.

@Damo You said "lots", but I cannot even find one. I could find an app which did auto-translation, but not a handheld itself.

@Damo What exactly are the LLM AIs being crammed in doing?

Such a weird headline, AI has nothing to do with the product, and who is even trying to add LLM AI to a basic emulation handheld anyway?

Another Kickstarter. Remember, Kickstarters are 100% customer risk pre-orders.

$82 delivery for such a small item is a joke.

It is insane that they have not secured a proper distributor for it in the UK and Europe, there's a lot of people who would gladly buy it if the price (after postage) were not so high.

That's the thing, all they are ever going to be is glorified pre-orders, no matter how much you try to spin the "patronage" angle, it just doesn't hold up. It is a 100% customer financial risk pre-order. As such, always better to wait for the eventual general release.

@Gamemoose So why are they holding features hostage behind certain backer goals? Seems a bit suspect to be doing that since they could just as easily add those features post-launch.

Fly by night or not, I don't pre-order in a manner where all of the financial risk is on the customer. I buy it at the point of release. That way I also know what I am getting for the money. If anything messes up with the pre-order then "goodwill" isn't going to suffice as a refund currency.

This is an advert for crowdfunding. And remember everyone, crowdfunding is a non-secured pre-order for something which may never release. If it is as fully-funded as it claims to be then just wait for the general release.

And anyone saying that features will be held hostage unless they raise enough money now, what is to stop them from adding those features post-release when it sells loads?

Eh? It's just a level and sample pack. I thought it was going to be adding new weapons and whatnot. Nothing to write home about.

"As Physical Media Rides Off Into The Sunset"

Clickbait headline alert. PlayStation has ditched it. Nintendo hasn't. Xbox have not announced. Do better.

Why did it take this long? Seems Commodore International flashed some cash at both sides to get them to end their feud.

@Fanboy_Destroyer As in you're telling me it was to do with AI? Doesn't seem to be the case.

The clowns who are singing the praises of AI MiSTer cores have completely forgotten/are completely ignorant of the aims of the MiSTer, which is accuracy and preservation, not merely emulation.

Article is a few years late, nobody worth their salt has put much credance into the words of Generation Amiga in about a decade.

Separately, it is a double shame that you're quoting Neil Green, considering he allowed some of the most disgusting homophobic insults to be made on his group a long time ago, because someone posted some artwork of two men holding hands. In fact, he was happy for the other admins of the group to threaten the person who posted it with being removed from the group for making a political post. Because apparently two men holding hands is political.

This is the same Neil Green who made a performative post on his Indie Retro News Facebook page not covering certain games (because he didn't get a free key for the games), before deleting it when called out by anyone with a brain.

@Kushan And I'm very "put it down to malice when money is involved, and it isn't the first time the GDQ organisation has been accused of dodgy things".

@Kushan More like going by the same logic they were hoping nobody would open their mouth about it so they could pocket the money.

As if GDQ didn't know that the sponsor was funded by human-rights violator. They knew full well and just wanted to see if nobody would notice or speak up enough for them to not get the funding from the sponsor.

@PZT Given the VGHF is more than a little dodgy, I would go elsewhere in trying to document this.

@Goldgreen That's exactly why they are calling it divisive, there are people who are hating on it, and there are people who love it, there doesn't seem to be a middle-ground.

I will say this, there's a lot of people who are saying "nobody wants this", and that is very obviously false.

@brakeman90 It depends what you mean. If you mean listening to them via the native apps they're on then it is a maybe depending upon the app.

If you just download them as an audio file and copy it over then it'll be a yes 100%.

HANG ON A MINUTE.

This is actually a $50 reduction being marketed as a $100.

On launch there was already going to be a $50 reduction (previously announced) before the use of any discount code, bringing the price to $450. The $500 price being touted by many press outlets didn't take this into account.

You may wish to edit your article to reflect this.

As a side note, the gold edition has not gotten so large of a discount.

If having those additions (earphones and "premium memory") makes it cost more than the original price was going to be then this price drop is a complete and utter con.

> "1 in 8 cartridges infused with Chaos Emerald energy"

Great, you get to pay $100 to enter what is basically a raffle.

@Fanboy_Destroyer "Credit where credit is due: he’s a condescending, gaslighting, gatekeeping master."

Can you elaborate upon this?

@mariteaux It does clarify it, as it states (and I quote), "Time Extension is looking for a talented and knowledgeable UK-based News Editor to join Jack and me on the site".

It is entirely possible that it was edited after you posted your comment, but the article as it stands at the time of writing is pretty clear cut.

@Guru_Larry It is running a fork of Sailfish OS with an Android compatibility layer, which is not the same thing as "running Android" as that implies that the core OS is Android.

It's not the first time we've seen such, some later Blackberry phones ran Blackberry OS but allowed for running Android apps via inclusion of an Android runtime (before Blackberry decided just to move all of their phones over to running Android OS natively).

Having had one of those Blackberry phones which had the Android runtime, app compatibility was patchy at best (an issue exacerbated by default screen dimensions which most Android apps were not designed to handle). I forsee issues with this new phone due to the way many Android apps handle logins by opening a web browser and then going back into the app itself, due to the fact that web browsers are blocked in this fork of the Sailfish OS.

I'd be interested to see if someone does a jailbreak for this phone, even thought it would go against everything the phone is purporting to be to begin with! 🤣

It looks exactly as I expected it would which can only be a bad thing. I cannot say I am tempted to purchase it.

Nice, is it getting a Mega Drive port too?

Turns out it is pre-order, it does not release until May 2027.

@mjparker77 You do know that if you only want the cases then you can buy the games without the console, right?

Crowdfunder: "Give me money".

Also, Crowdfunder: "I don't think my audience is worth committing brain power to writing a sales pitch for myself, I'll just outsource that to AI".

Get a Herman Miller Aeron, your spine will thank you later.