PXAbstraction

Still have my copy of Gradius Advance. Love that game! Looking forward to trying this out.

@h3s I've ordered plenty of AliExpress stuff reliably, but I find when looking for "brand name" stuff like these drives, many people often either get the wrong model or a model that doesn't have the right firmware, despite what was advertised. Not saying you're guaranteed to get scammed, it's just a risk, especially when they're still charging $150+ for the drives.

I'm from Canada, but every listing I could find for these drives on Amazon, Newegg and elsewhere shows unavailable. LG and ASUS still have product pages for the drives, but they don't seem to be active SKUs anymore.

@Lanmanna $150-$250, even on places like AliExpress. I haven't looked super hard, but that was the average after about 30 minutes of looking into it.

@DanijoEX Let us know if you can find one and at a semi-sane price. I haven't had any luck so far.

@ddlevine I personally don't care about violating an outdated law written by people who didn't understand the technology they were regulating, but from what I can tell, you are right. You are legally allowed to make backup copies of media you own, but you aren't legally allowed under the DMCA to bypass encryption to do so. I'm Canadian so the DMCA doesn't apply to me, though our copyright law doesn't allow it either. Not the case worldwide though.

@h3s Yeah, USB-based peripherals are always tricky like that because as you say, the USB chipset introduces its own layer of communication that isn't always standards compliant. It sucks cause I have a barely used Pioneer 3.5" drive, but it's not compatible. The only ones on the supported list I can find for anything approaching sane pricing are on AliExpress, which it's a crap shoot if you'll get what you order and they're still like $150.

If you still have a PC with one of these drives, hold onto it because you're sitting on a gold mine. I tried to find one of the models in the compatibility list for this project and they've all been discontinued and are already selling for massive markups, if you can find them at all.

Wish there was somewhere to pre-order the Ultimate set in Canada. I had to order it from Plaion, which is already a gut punch for currency conversion and the import fees will be worse.

@sdelfin OK thanks. I couldn't tell from Plaion's site soci wanted to make sure.

Question that maybe people here would know: Does the Ultimate package include a memory card? It doesn't look like it based on the web site. If not, are you able to save games and scores directly on the console or do you need a separate memory card? Really hoping that if you do require one, that they didn't fail to include that in the supposed "Ultimate" package.

@NeonPizza Can't argue with you there.

@Bod2019 I so wish they'd do this. I really want a physical edition of Earthion, but LRG is an instant no go.

LRG is a terrible company, in no small part because Josh Fairhurst is a terrible person and had an iron grip on the place. Everyone deserves a second chance, but they have a LOT of work to do to earn my trust back before I'd give them a dime again. It is interesting to me though that they announce this shortly after Fairhurst left so maybe they can finally do the things they've known they needed to for years.

My story and one of MANY with this company: https://geekbravado.com/limited-run-games-sucks-heres-my-reason-why/

Nintendo being as notoriously litigious as they are, I would love to see them go after this the same way they go after fan emulators that do essentially no brand damage. There is no way this classifies as Fair Use and as far as I know, government entities are not exempt from copyright law.

As it should be. I'm frankly surprised that Google cared to deindex them given how much AI slop dominates results now. Meanwhile, my hobby blog that is completely written by me is completely unindexed by Google despite meeting all their requirements (and Bing having no problem indexing it) and they refuse to tell me why.

I didn't know The Escapist got sold yet again, but that site has been under a constant string of failed management almost since its inception. I think literally every company that has owned the brand has either gone bankrupt or is very close to it. I'm amazed it's still going at all.

Picked up the Amiga and C65 versions last night. Really looking forward to trying this out on my Amiga 1200.

It wasn't a failure in terms of unit sales. However, a lot of game developers and publishers do consider it a failure and many abandoned it for the second half of its life because piracy became so easy and so rampant that developing a commercial PSP game was almost guaranteed to be a money losing proposition. I used to have friends who sold jailbreaking services on local classified sites. They weren't techies at all, but it literally took them like 20 minutes to soft mod a PSP and they could sell the services for $50 a pop.

I have one of these on order that hasn't shipped yet. I'm curious if they'll change this to units already in production or not.

@SpacemanSpliffz Oh yes, I know those well.

@SpacemanSpliffz Legal trouble?

Horrible company made that way by his horrible leadership. Maybe with him gone, they'll become a place I'd remotely consider giving my money to again since publishers keep partnering with them for some baffling reason.

Well, this is some Mandela Effect stuff right here...

Tragic loss. Some absolute gems attributed to him. RIP.

@MapsBam Yeah OK bud. I've got better things to do than spend my Friday arguing with someone who only registered their account this morning to spew nonsense in this thread. That should tell people here all about your intentions, assuming you're not just a bot. I hope you never have to end up in the place Rebecca has. Peace.

@MapsBam You're projecting if you think I believe Democrats are perfect. They are merely the lesser of two evils. Much lesser in this particular case.

And no, insurance is not universally affordable. Speaking of propaganda. It's funny that when you could have just wished her well, you instead chose to focus on regurgitating falsehoods about the US healthcare system hocked by grifters instead. Speaking of things that make you go hmmmm.

@MapsBam A few thousand dollars? Do you have any concept of what American health care costs or how expensive insurance is, especially for the self-employed? And how is she supposed to get government assistance when Trump just shut down the government because Democrats are fighting wait for it...massive health care cuts!

My best to her. An OG game dev legend who deserves better.

I hate that LRG and Josh Fairhurst continue to succeed despite the well documented scumminess of both. Been burned by this company twice, never again.

Absolutely loved this game. Beat it on my now dormant YouTube channel many years back. Still amazing to me that it was a launch window title with everything they did. The soundtrack is still one of the best on the SNES.

@NoirConceit Read this site's original story about Barcadia closing. Most of the claims being thrown around were BS made up by trolls. I mean sure, you have to take his word on that, but none of the actual Barcadia staff have made any claims of non-payment.

@skipperfly He also has a written version of that with more detail too: https://www.nostalgianerd.com/commodore-heist

Short version: This Italian company is run by some very shady people who are almost certainly lying about what they do and don't own. And I say that as someone who is only cautiously optimistic about Perifractic's new Commodore.

This will either be great or a glorious trainwreck. Either way, I look forward to it.

Played Ghostbusters so much back in the day on the C64. Definitely interested in seeing where this goes!

@nocdaes We have several of these kinds of arcades where I live in Canada. Most charge between $10 and $20 for all you can play, not per hour. If you want to draw in more than hardcore retro people (many of whom know how to use emulators), you have to have a low barrier to entry.

What these places do to make up the difference is selling food and booze. I've talked to a few operators because I briefly toyed with the idea of opening one myself and they said the entry fees only help cover some costs, the food, booze and sometimes, merch is where the actual profit is generated. Much like with movie theatres who make nothing on the tickets, but make profit on the overpriced popcorn and pop.

If you intend to survive on just entry fees and especially if you're charging by the hour (I'm curious how he's enforcing that), you're either probably not going to survive or will have to operate in a very cheap area.

If Josh Fairhurst is claiming it, it's almost certainly a lie.

Curious why the investigative video I sent in on LRG last week didn't get picked up here. Or anywhere else.

OMG, why does Atari's store still not ship to Canada?! 😭

I have zero love for Karl Jobst, between his major shift towards being a drama channel and the scumbag companies he advertises to an audience with more than a few young people in it, but that Mitchell managed to win this is a complete miscarriage of justics.

The proof will be on the pudding in the end, but this is about as honest and "non-corpo" a statement as you could ask for.

Done and done! I've been following these from Canada and would LOVE an ability to buy one without importing, which costs a fortune for us.

This is like the third time the name has been resurrected. It came back as a free-to-play publisher that blew up similarly to the original one, an indie studio in Montreal that makes new games for the NES was using the name (curious how that worked out), and now this. It's funny to me because while it's a name many in retro circles remember, it's often also remembered for publishing a lot of shovelware.

Didn't expect an article from Time Extension to hit me in the feels, but here we are. I still play games with friends online all the time and love it, plus I play a lot of single player stuff too. But I agree, it's just not the same. I used to play games in person with friends all the time in the 80s and 90s and even in the 2000s, I remember hanging with my buddy and his stoner friends in the house they shared, playing hours and hours of 4 player Gamecube games. It was a blast and something I still treasure greatly. Time to get some people over for some retro nights I think.

Many don't remember Dune as much as Dune II, but it was also excellent and a very different game. His soundtrack was also incredible and some of the most creative use of MIDI ever put into a game. I highly recommend picking up his remaster on Bandcamp and trying the game if you can find it. A true legend lost. 😟

@Guru_Larry Oof, I hope that doesn't happen.

Initial reports said they were wholly rebranding, but I'm glad that like when Focus Entertainment's parent become Pullup (seriously, wut?), that the names people know are being kept.

My launch Wii U has been in storage for a while and I was planning to pull it out soon to jailbreak it. I'll be curious if it actually starts up, but I'm glad there's a solution if it doesn't. Gaming gods bless modders!

Even if I cared to read anything this hack has written, I'd be getting a pirated eBook of it, just to piss him off.

This is an insanely cool idea.

Slopes Game Room is undoubtedly in pre-production on the Kickscammers episode about this.

Ohhhh, this one's going on the wishlist!

@Blofse "Wonder how long it will be before we get made up customer sales numbers for products because a company faked the sales by using AI? Can't be far away from that."

Pretty sure that would be considered investor fraud, but it would be an interesting litmos test because yeah, someone will probably try it.

Highly recommend this video. It was a great chat. Hearing about some of the stuff Romero's managed to accumulate is amazing.

"Oooohhh, we've got this notion
That we'd quite like to sail the ocean
So we're buildin' a big boat to leave here for good
We're not keen on sinkin'
So we're all sittin' here a thinkin'
Cos we built it too big and we've run out of wood
EIDLE EIDLE EEE
EIDLE EIDLE EEE
We simply can't leave til we get some more wood
Ooooooooohhhhhhhh"