PKDuckman

@slider1983 It really depends on how the IP was sold, and many such IPs are owned by the companies rather than individual creators. So unless Sorrell fundraise large amount of money, I doubt System 3 would sell back the IP.

IIRC, the James Bond IP was developed by Millennium Interactive, which got bought by Sony and became Cambridge Studios, until it was shut down a few years ago. The rights to the Amiga era games however got snatched up by others and transferred hands several times, and that includes James Pond, Creatures and Diggers, being one of my favourite games growing up.

@h3s I think the game was Aliens Colonial Marines, which Gearbox subcontracted to Timegate while they took Sega's money to spend on Borderlands 2 and its DLCs. The game's poor reception eventually led to the closure of Timegate.

IIRC, DNF was mostly finished by Triptych, which was largely composed of former 3D Realms employees after the company went bankrupt. Gearbox simply slapped its name on the end product.

I would have enjoyed DNF better if they got rid of all the mechanics introduced by later FPS games like health regen, limited weapons, and uncontrollable cutscenes, and unashamedly embrace its old school roots.

Who knows, had the game been further delayed for a few years it could've jumped on the retro FPS craze and reverted back to the 2001 version.

I just find that the game selection to be a little at odds with each other. Taito and M2 should've ported the light gun games in one collection, and the sprite scaling games in another. For instance:

Aqua Jack
Chase HQ
Night Striker
SCI

Alien Gun
Battle Shark
Operation Thunderbolt
Operation Wolf

@jamess You're acting as if Palmer isn't already a controversial political figure and people aren't allowed to respond to a damn arms dealer. He isn't just some random game developer with an opinion people disagree with. If anything, he's the one who should keep his toxic brand of politics out of gaming.

And no, game developers had always dabbled in political commentary even during the early days. The Cannon Fodder series for instance is explicitly anti-war, and so is Spec Ops: The Line, and Hideo Kojima also used real historical and political events in his storytelling.

@jamess Most of the developers of the games I play aren't funding wars overseas and engaging in mass deportations in the USA.

@Sketcz There's quite a difference between a game developer expressing an opinion, vs an arms dealer wanting to break into gaming. It's not like that Palmer himself is quiet about his views, and if he's free to express himself on controversial issues, other people are free to respond. It's a two way street.

Sadly I never heard of the game, and according to Metacritic only one site has reviewed the game. It really needed exposure.

We do need more Apogee remasters and port them to consoles too. It's strange that on Switch all we got was Keen Dreams, the weakest Commander Keen game.

@Atariboy I greatly enjoyed the Top Racer Collection, since it's not just a quick ROM dump like the older standalone Qubyte games, but a port that greatly expanded upon the originals, with all tracks unlocked for quick races, plus leaderboards and online multiplayer. There's also a crossover between Top Racer 1 and Horizon Chase, where you can play vehicles from the latter in the former.

@MontyCircus Silpheed, Thexder, and Zanac EX are solid shooters, if you can tolerate the slower processing speed of old Japanese PCs.

Dragon Slayer 4 is another great one, it's the original version of Legacy of the Wizard on the the NES, with some map changes. It's not text heavy at all.

This game is kinda like Cadash...in that the Genesis version is mysteriously missing the extra characters classes.

The original MSX2 version is available digitally on Switch and is rather fun, and has almost zero Japanese text.

@MontyCircus It's likely based on the same versions in the standalone Qubyte Classics releases.

The SNES versions of First Samurai, Gourmet Warriors, Iron Commando, and Legend.
The Genesis versions of Second Samurai, Sword of Sodan, and Water Margin.

Which is unfortunate since several games have superior Amiga versions.

If only LRG could unearth the original version of Saturn Doom which is actually playable, unlike the final version which is just a bad port of PS1 Doom. It still bogs my mind why John Carmack allowed SNES Doom to run on a different engine but not Saturn Doom.

@VeganH Water Margin is actually a bootleg game which took assets from other 16-bit beat em ups like King of Dragons and Streets of Rage. Piko actually took out some of the more egregious elements when they localized the game, like the original intro which ripped off the FF6 theme.

@KingMike There is also an Amiga version but it's quite different, as it plays more like the first game. The Genesis version is closer to a beat em up with some shooting levels.

@RextheSheep I've read some reviews and the new emulator, which is used by the Accolade, Top Racer, and Visco collections, apparently fixed the issues with input lag in the standalone versions.

@mjparker77 And the awful Genesis version of Sword of Sodan. I guess an Amiga emulator is too much work for Qubyte.

@Zoinkity He also worked on an online-focused FPS called Severity during the late 2000s that was eventually cancelled.

Ironically some of his best work in the past decade are the Sigil campaigns for Doom.

The problem is that Romero's heyday has gone past him and for the last decade he mostly worked on mobile phone games. His last big budget game, Empire of Sin, is average at best.

Yep Telenet Japan's games are hit and miss.

@GMMXX No, people were cheering about the Activision purchase because it got rid of Bobby Kotick who fostered a culture of sexual abuse at the company, and pretty much forced every other developer to help with COD. And Sony paying them regularly for timed DLC exclusivity was such an anti-consumer move to begin with.

And as if Sony doesn't have their own problems with AAA development and trying to chase the live service dream, from mismanagement at Bungie to the Concord fiasco, not to mentioning multiple cancelled games recently with a multiplayer focus.

@Deway I don't think they're making money from Windows sales anymore either. IIRC most of the money from Windows actually comes from user data telemetry.

@OnePointZero I got mine from Amazon a few years ago but I'm not sure if it's still being sold there.

I was told that ININ which distributed the console in the West ran into financial issues and it sold below expectations.

@RootsGenoa They've been out since the beginning of this year.

What Arcade Archives is missing are the Taito F3 games, which are included in the Egret Mini and the old Taito Legends collections.

@no_donatello That has more to do with market changes during the 2010s, where the bigger publishers like Capcom and Konami all tried to Westernize themselves by giving their IPs to Western publishers. Pretty much all AAA JRPGs not from Square Enix vanished. MS's efforts in developing Lost Odyssey didn't work out to financial success, and even with a few successes like Tales of Vesperia, many Japanese gamers simply sold the console once they finished the game.

Is this really a Xbox issue, or an industry issue? Over the last gen we have seen increased game prices, growing dependence on DLC and microtransactions, increased casualization, and dependence on AI, all in the name of chasing greater profits to the degree that a game need multi-millions in sales just to break even.

Even Sony isn't immune to this. Last gen they started copying MS and began charging for online, and blocked crossplay in multiplayer games until users revolted. And now the suits admitted that they're more interested in chasing monthly active users than actual sales, explaining their recent trend chasing of GAAS including Marathon and Concord, which most of their player base did not ask for.

TBH the Google Play store is really bad with preservation. I've had several delisted games outright disappearing from my downloads list, like Ridiculous Fishing, despite paying money for it.

Just noting that the delisted versions are the Dotemu ports from 2015, which some people prefer due to having training mode and online multiplayer.

Hamster just dropped an English trailer complete with ESRB ratings. I assume since Macross 2 is not canon, it's not affected by the licensing issues.

https://youtu.be/1_ImfWmr-3s

I also hope to see Macross Plus later. It's MOSS's first shmup and laid lots of groundwork for the newer Raiden games.

Kinda strange that Hamster chose to skip the original arcade Air Combat.

@Kushan Yep. I don't why the devs even wasted money on his image when most Terminator fans don't know who he is, and his SA allegations could easily bring bad publicity.

@slider1983 The funny thing is, the theme of the Life Force movie was ripped off by the composer of the first Baldur's Gate.

https://youtu.be/EsV7TuNMr5M
https://youtu.be/Q5xyTZTlrXM

I'm pretty sure it will come to the Switch, since I don't recall Ratalaika doing any console exclusives.

@Blast16 I checked a few minutes ago and there are close to 30 ongoing games for Oriental Legends and Knights of Valour Plus. It's worth noting that the servers are hosted in mainland Chinese cities so unless IGS wants to implement servers elsewhere, you'd be facing significant lag.

Good thing is that the devs eventually re-added the 4:3 display options, since the original release has forced widescreen.

And I was surprised to find that multiplayer is incredibly popular for a bunch of 90s arcade games. You'd have no problems finding an online game of Oriental Legend.

Hamster is taking its sweet time unfortunately, since the 8-bit titles are far easier to port than 16-bit ones, and they also want to push out the ones from companies they bought such as NMK and UPL.

I'm still waiting for the rest of Konami's titles from the Mystic Warriors hardware, such as Violent Storm, Monster Maulers, and Gaiapolis.

Sega should just ported the the old Model 2 games on XBLA to modern systems.

@Kurokage Good news the PAL versions are coming in an update

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2025/06/gex-trilogy-adding-pal-versions-and-voices-in-its-next-update#comments

Nice. Fingers crossed for Astyanax and Shatterhand.

@kitestar Oh I remember he also drives the flying car from Turbo Force. And another team comes from the game Karate Blazers.

If you like Cabal clones like Dynamite Duke and Nam 1975, I also recommend Riot which is also on Arcade Archives. It starts off luke a military shooter but soon you start fighting wizards and creatures straight out of a Doctor Strange comic.

@firenze Sorry but what you're claiming are a bunch of false analogies and whataboutisms. MBS having a minority stake in Nintendo is far different from a 90% control in SNK. Furthermore, the difference between Misk Foundation and Tencent is that the former is directly owned by the ruler of Saudi Arabia through his NGO, whereas the latter is a public company in China that, like any other companies there, follow Chinese law. Using your logic, does that make Activision and EA extensions of the US government because they also follow US law, pay taxes, and have former politicians as lobbyists?

While there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, it doesn't mean people should complete ignore problematic direct ties between media and atrocities.

It's worth noting that as of 2025, pretty much all of the games besides AVP are available via cheaper options, whether Capcom Arcade Stadium, Capcom Beat Em Up Bundle, or Capcom Fighting Collection.

Hopefully this will lead to a Midway collection next in the style of Atari 50. Or even a Konami Animaniacs/Tony Toons collections akin to TMNT Cowabunga Collection.

Sigh, there are so many better Jaleco NES games they could've picked, like Whomp Em, Shatterhand, or Astyanax.

@Fighting_Game_Loser I assume Bandai Namco wants to charge more for their 32-bit games, and Nebulas Ray is one.

There is also a sequel that plays more like Capcom's Commando. Sadly it's being sold in Edia's overpriced compilation instead.

@XiaoShao Konami's 80s arcade game posters are just crazy. They used real life models with little connection to the game in question. Even Ripley from the Aliens game is a random blonde.

https://retrovania-vgjunk.blogspot.com/2013/05/konamis-arcade-flyers-1986-86.html

LRG should just focus on standard releases for current consoles. They're just wasting resources focusing on retro consoles and the extras for collectors editions, particularly in this economy.