Oldretrogamer

The same dev has also made conversions of Tennis for the Spectrum, CPC and CPC+/GX4000.

All versions have converted by AI, but I must admit the GX4000 version does play well, unlike many AI ports.

That was an excellent read, thank you!

I spent my first student loan on an import Super Famicom and I only ever got as far as being able to recognise Start and Option on the menu in Katakana…didn’t stop me from completing Zelda fully in Japanese but I should have spent time to learn what was actually going on!

@Damo while I totally understand your perspective, you’re not really reviewing the device, just how it aligns with whether it works for you, as an Evercade cartridge owner.

I think you could have pointed out whether Space Shuttle works or is basically unplayable on the small device, for example. And does Decathlon work with the dpad compared to waggling the 2600 joystick or does it negatively impact the experience?

@h3s just my opinion, yet they’re perfectly playable. The Taito Pocket was my introduction to Evercade and the majority of the games on there work perfectly fine.

Since then, I’ve purchased lots more carts and a VS to play on my monitor but I still use the Pocket for many games (I finished Tomb Raider 1 on it without any major difficulties and it’s great for the Llamasoft collection).

@Sketcz I do know what you mean, I don’t trust the government at all. I just meant that it wasn’t eBay wanting your NI number, it’s a legal requirement beyond certain selling limits in the UK.

I’m vey close to hitting those limits now actually so I’ll update here when/if it happens.

Great article and disappointing that Favreau tried to gloss over the more recent uses of the character, even when Deadline pointed it out to him.

Nah, no FOMO at all for these versions, but I do want a standard Pocket at some point.

@Kurokage yes, but only if you reach certain thresholds set by the UK Government, it’s not eBay wanting your NI number for just a few sales.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/account/regulatory/sales-reporting/uk-digital-sales-reporting?id=5454

The UK Digital Sales Tax means they need to report to HMRC if you sell more than 30 items, or over around £1700, in one year.

So selling a few things isn’t going to ask you for your NI number. I’ve sold a heck of a lot on eBay over the years (including recently) and I’ve never been asked for my NI number.

And even reaching those thresholds doesn’t mean you have to pay tax to HMRC if it’s just personal items you’re selling.

I really hope this happens! I remember finding CEX in Rathbone Place in the late 90s during a trip to London to visit a friend, complete with their retro basement, and being equally excited that this was the street Your Sinclair used to be based in as part of Dennis Publishing!

@KingMike congrats! Please let us know how it goes, and what legacy cart and other goodies you get

@Sketcz jeez, a bit late to this thread but what happened to cause this?

Yes it is impressive to see ST games like this ported to the Jaguar, and recoded to not need keyboard input.

Plus it's an excellent version of the game!

Fair enough, I don’t think it was ever used in the UK though (where I’m from)!

And from looking it up more, it’s never been used by the public in the UK, only by the fashion industry internally so at least I don’t feel stupid now 😂

Sorry, when did different colours of cases become called “colourways”? Rather than just, eg “colour variants”?

This is a new, and pointless, addition to the language in my opinion!

Thanks for this review, it’s a definite purchase for me!

I chose my GX4000 over spending the money on a NES, and I still don’t regret it. Burnin’ Rubber is a brilliant racing game, bundled with the console, and Pang, Navy SEALS and Switchblade are excellent games which didn’t come out on as CPC versions (even if Navy SEALS is too hard!).

I’ve emulated GX4000 games I didn’t own using RVM but much prefer playing on original hardware so this will be great

What’s wrong with the console’s SCART output though? I’ve got it connected to a Commodore 1084 monitor and I think it looks great!

Been following this for a wee while, it’s looking ever more impressive! There’s some cool mechanics in there and the crank use looks nice too.

What a fantastic interview, thanks for publishing this!

One thing, when Jon Knoles mentions “Mark K. Hutchinson”, I think he means Mark Haigh-Hutchinson (a miracle worker who managed to get Paperboy on the Amstead CPC to have full-screen diagonal scrolling) who sadly passed away too young. He worked on the first three Metroid Prime games too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Haigh-Hutchinson

@occamyDG or you could just not read them if they bother you so much.

I think it’s an excellent idea, bringing back memories of when Jaz Rignall won the UK Video Arcade Game Championship in 1983.

Having a live final (hopefully on original hardware) means it comes down to proper skill.

I’m a big fan of hiscore competitions, AtariAge has ongoing ones for each Atari console on their website.

@slider1983 of course human-written articles can be biased, but if you know the writer’s work you can factor that into how you read their take on whatever it is.

Back in the day, I got to know what styles of games the writers on, for example, Your Sinclair liked so would know that if a certain writer liked a game then I probably would too. And that continues today where I know that if Mark Kermode likes a film there’s a good chance I will too.

But with AI I’ve no idea where or who it’s scraping its thoughts from, or if it’s even hallucinating.

I’m sad enough to argue with Google AI when I notice that it’s brought up a load of crap in response to my (non-AI focussed) search and it’s not surprising how often it replies with “You’re absolutely right, I was confusing X with Y!” 🤦

I do think that if someone’s going to use AI, that’s a fairly decent reason, using it to create conversion scripts (apart from the environmental impact in general of course).

Just like @LowDefAI said, but I didn’t see their reply till after I posted!

@Thad I’ve no idea, but speaking for myself I’d rather see human thoughts on something than an aggregated review created by an AI.

@slider1983 I’m pretty sure AI has bias as well.

And I’d rather consider human bias (as I know this site) than have to think about AI bias where I don’t have a clue how it comes to its decisions.

@slider1983 TE articles are written by humans who care about her words they’re using.

AI-written articles care about what they’ve scraped off other websites and write with no actual human thought about what they like.

That’s the huge difference. There’s no pros to listening to a website scraper that manages to sound vaguely human vs an actual human who has played a game.

For god’s sake Sega, just employ ad people who can use Photoshop to create decent ad images using the real content they’ve been given! Not everything should be a quick solution, using actual human talent is a good thing.

@ihaveallthecoins nope.

It would end up with soulless translations. I’d rather muddle through the game in Japanese, like I did with the first Super Famicom Ganbare Goemon.

“No human proofreading pass” - so does this mean that they didn’t even read over the translation to check it made basic sense in English?

I hadn’t bought a football game since Sensi on the PC, but decided to get this for my Japanese N64 after reading how good it was. And boy, was it great! Controls were excellent, using the buttons on the N64 pad really well, and as you say the Japanese commentary describing the play was just sublime (conna kicku desu! Thru pass! Goal, goal, perfecto goal!). Now I’m going to have to dig my cart out and give it a go this week…

Great write-up and a game that I’m contemplating getting from CEX as I don’t think it’s bad for £20 + postage.

I like that you’ve embedded Chorizo Machine’s recent video, he shows off a lot of great (and not-so-great) retro games, love his channel.

The thing is, EDGE published some very decent Spectrum games and software back in the day (Fairlight, Bobby Bearing, The Artist, none written by Langdell of course) but it’s just ridiculous and disappointing how Langdell decided to make his future money off claiming copyright over the word “edge”.

So that update completely contradicts what the original statement said. Before, they said gen AI would be used for background assets which would be reviewed by the team. Now they’re saying everythjjgninnthe final game will be original.

In which case, what’s the point of wasting time using AI for graphics which will be completely redone after “review”, rather than just letting artists be creative from the beginning?

I know some will say AI can be used for inspiration but frankly if you’re a game artist and can’t come up with decent background art for a city without getting a machine to throw ideas at you, maybe it’s not the right role for you.

@slider1983 apparently Infogrames bought Ocean years ago and has since morphed into Atari, so they have the rights.

Going to give this and the other roms a try over the next few days, amazing find from those guys!

I mean, I get what they’re saying, but it’s not really a shareware twist! It’s what they’ve done with the previous Indie Heroes collections, releasing each game for free for a month (or longer if you don’t update the console) then replacing it with another game from the upcoming cart.

Although I guess it’s the first time they’ve not included the full game as the monthly freebie. So ok, maybe it is more like shareware then haha

Very interesting!

I’ll just point out another wee typo…

“but what you need to know is that the recent draw distance is so difficult on the console is…”

should be “reason” not “recent”

The 2 spinner + game price seems inflated compared to the difference between game only and game + 1 spinner…it’s an extra 80 euro (or 100 euro compared to early bird) for the second controller.

Great review of a great collection, and I don’t even mind having the Vic-20 and C64 versions of some of the games as they do play differently.

But there’s a fatal bug in Sheep in Space just now where, when you get a hiscore, it asks you to type in your name but you can’t bring up an onscreen keyboard, and if you press Y to skip a few letters the game freezes, so you can’t get a hiscore and continue to play the game. Evercade say they’re looking into it.

@Mrakey wow, pointless unpleasantness! People should make what we they want to, and sometimes the technical challenge is enough to make it worthwhile.

@mjparker77 yeah, it was a pretty straight port for, what I’ve seen, all single colour sprites, just a direct translation from the Spectrum. And I notice the screenshot has gone form the review now!

Great comprehensive review @Damo ! Just one correction, the 2600+ didn’t originally ship with a wireless joystick, it came with a wired CX40+. Not sure if it comes with one now though.

@Damo the screenshot of Underwurlde looks like the C64 version, is that what’s included rather than the Speccy version?

@Zeebor15 at this point, being cracked and fried seems the best option.

@metaphysician at least David Crane is still making actual Atari 2600 games through Audacity, the latest of which came out in the last couple of weeks. I don’t think he should be lumped in with the likes of Tallarico’s Amico embarrassment…

@brakeman90 it’s one of the things I like about Playdate games, on Catalog they tell you if generative AI was used to help create the game.

I would absolutely love this cos of the paddle, spinner, trackball and numpad controls, but your point about Tempest not displaying properly (like Space invaders on Super Pocket Taito) along with the screenshot showing the issue, has put me off for now.

So I know it doesn’t really matter, but it’s 1p cheaper to buy the Switch/PS4 version and upgrade it to Switch 2/PS5…

@Weez totally, and within that I would add that coding is a major aspect of how a game feels, so using AI to create game code risks altering how a game plays and feels, and adds roadblocks to human intervention as programmers will struggle to read and alter AI-produced code (although I know that human-produced code often lacks helpful commenting!)

@axelhander the issue is that in the creative arts AI isn’t going to be used to take the drudgery out of work, it’s going to be used to create content more quickly and cheaply, thereby putting creatives out of work.

[edit: exactly what @Weez just said]

Numberwang!

Very impressive, and I still wish the Imagine megagames had come out…

@Martin_H Lance Barr designed the NES and SNES consoles! Definitely exists… https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/08/the_designer_of_the_nes_and_snes_has_retired_from_nintendo_after_almost_40_years